Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, March 27, 1991                   TAG: 9103270020
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-2   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Medium

MORE WORK, PLAY WITH COMPUTERS

More and more adults use computers on the job - 37 percent in 1989, up from 25 percent in 1984, when the Census Bureau took its first computer-use survey.

Computers are more popular because they're cheaper and there are more things to do with them, said the study's author, Robert Kominski. Future growth depends largely on "what kind of future applications people and industry can come up with," he said.

In 1984, computers were used by 46.6 million people over the age of 3, about 20 percent of the population.

Five years later, that number had grown to 74.9 million people, about 32 percent of the population.

The study found people using computers for tasks barely practical five years before, such as desktop publishing, computer-assisted design and electronic mail.

Even so, the survey's findings suggested computers' usefulness hadn't kept up with their capabilities.

Today's small, inexpensive computers put on a desktop computing power that decades ago would have required a roomful of equipment.

All that power, however, is used mainly for one serious task: word processing, or typewriting on a screen. Sixty-two percent of home-computer owners use their machines for word processing. That's also the most prevalent use in the office.

"I think there's no question that people have always oversold and romanticized what computers can do," said Tracy Licklider, president of the Boston Computer Society, the nation's largest computer-user group.

The next most common home use was playing video games. That application was mentioned by 44 percent of adults and 84 percent of children.