Holdouts

A recent Pew poll finds that 20% of Americans don’t use the Internet and many of them don’t have much interest in getting on-line. Even though I use the Internet heavily and would probably go into convulsions if I ever had to give up my broadband connection, I can imagine other people getting along perfectly well with only the dimmest awareness of the digital realm. A telephone and a TV are enough to give someone a basic level of connectivity and entertainment. The Internet is incredibly useful and the best combination productivity tool/time waster ever invented, but the devices used to access it are still too complicated. Intuitive user interfaces like that found on the iPad might do enough hand-holding to get more people on-line, although the hardware will have to become drastically cheaper. I have little doubt that broadband access will someday be ubiquitous even in the loneliest corners of the nation, but we’ll need to come up with something better than Facebook or Youtube to sell the refusniks on the idea that they might be missing out on something.