Coming soon to a street near you
Believe it or not, not everyone in the UK uses the internet. According to Ofcom's research, 73% of UK adults use the internet, but in the 65-plus age group that falls to just 41%, and within the DE socio-economic group it is just 50%.
That's around 10 million adults in the UK who currently do not use the internet. In its rush to embrace everything Internet, product designers, businesses and government all need to be careful not to further marginalise these and other parts of our society. The head of the government's Digital Inclusion Task Force tasked with Digital Engagement is Martha Lane-Fox, whose claim to fame is as co-founder of LastMinute.com, media and dot com millionaire.
In her role as Digital Champion, she came in for criticism in August when she told BBC Radio 4 "I don't think you can be a proper citizen of our society in the future if you are not engaged online". But if that situation came to pass, who would be at fault there? Would it be the fault of those 10 million UK adults who are not Internet-savvy and have different priorities in their lives? Or would it be the fault of society itself and those who claim to speak for it, who try to impose their own techno-vision of the future onto the masses, to the exclusion of those who cannot or will not comply?
More recently Lane-Fox has added to her argument by claiming that a report she commissioned from Price Waterhouse Coopers estimates that getting everyone online would save the government one billion annually and boost the economy by £22.6 billion. Are these figures credible? How would this work? She goes on to give examples of the long-term unemployed being able to check online for job vacancies early in the morning instead of arriving at the Job Centre later in the day, only to find the jobs have all been taken; or of people shopping online to find bargains, (presumably having already spent most of their money on the computer). But these examples don't generate more jobs or more product in the economy. They just shuffle around the resources and devalue High Street shops.
So how does Lane-Fox propose to get more people online. One solution so far has been to build a website called RaceOnline2012.org which sports the obligatory "BETA" logo to give it street credibility, the dreaded horizontal scroll bar on the average-sized screen, and one of those awful low-accessibility "Captcha" boxes to complete if you want to contact them. Of course there is also a Twitter channel. All very well, but I'm sure you've spotted the obvious flaw in this: how does an online website help people who need help getting online?
That's not the only thing that Digital Engagement is doing. Lane-Fox told The Guardian "I've been lobbying both the BBC and ITV to say one of the most dramatic things that I think we could do would be to have a proper storyline about technology in public consciousness. I'd love a storyline about getting online in East Enders or Coronation Street."
28th October 2009
This article comes from the SKILLZONE email newsletter, published monthly since January 2008, and covering topics related to technology and the internet. All articles and artwork in the SKILLZONE newsletter are orignal content.