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Web 2.0 may look set to conquer the world, but it has yet to win over the 69 percent of Americans who failed to qualify as "elite tech users." That's the message from a Pew Internet & American Life report that came out today and provides a glimpse at how people in the US—not just techies—use and feel about the technology in their lives. The report, titled "A Typology of Information and Communication Technology Users" (PDF), breaks Americans into three general categories: elite tech users (31 percent of adults), middle-of-the-road tech users (20 percent of adults), and those with few tech assets (49 percent of adults). Pay particular attention to that last number; though technology marches on, half of all Americans use it only lightly or not at all. When the numbers are broken down further, a full 15 percent of all US adults have neither cell phones nor Internet connectivity.

Those with "few tech assets" make up 49 percent of the US adult population. Many of them have some form of access to the Internet, and most have cell phones, but technology "does not play a central role in their daily lives." Instead of being liberating, constant connectivity is "annoying," and many older users have trouble even navigating the Internet. The 15 percent of Americans who don't use cell phones or the Internet tend to be in their mid-60s with lower levels of income and education, according to the report.

That's according to research firm Basex, which chose "information overload" as its 2008 "Problem of the Year." Failure to solve the problem will lead to "reduced productivity and throttled innovation."

The Atlantic ran a lengthy piece on the false promise of multitasking in its November edition (subscribers only), using as one of its epigraphs a line by Publilius Syrus: "To do two things at once is to do neither."

In a 2007 Pew survey, 49 percent of Americans described themselves as having "few tech assets" and said that constant connectivity was an annoyance, not a liberation.