The novelist Jeremy Cameron has his own website. He can tell you its address (www.stowbooks.co.uk), but he has never visited, because he doesn’t know how to. “Some of the lads at the tennis club set it up for me, but I wouldn’t be able to access it myself,” he says. Cameron writes his novels in longhand and doesn’t have a computer. Even if he did, it would not be online.
At 58, Cameron is a technology refusenik. Although the internet and all it offers are only as far away as a phone line, Cameron is perfectly happy doing without. “I can’t think of any way in which the internet would enhance my life. What I’m interested in is writing, reading, playing tennis, going to the mountains and working on our allotment. I don’t need the internet for any of that.”
Cameron is not alone. Although it has never been cheaper or simpler to go online, more than a third of the UK population cannot, or will not, get connected. Take-up has run into the buffers, levelling off at 60% of the population, just one percentage point past the tide mark reached two years ago. What’s more, new research by the Oxford Internet Institute (OII) reveals that it is not only money, age or education that is stopping people going online. Many people remain unconnected by choice — they are digital refuseniks.
“That took us by surprise,” says Professor William Dutton, director of the OII, which is part of the University of Oxford. “The emphasis of most researchers is on the economic barriers. What surprises us is the degree to which the debate about the internet does not mention choice.”
The internet is not the only new(ish) technology that people think they can live without. About 15% of the population conduct their lives perfectly well without a mobile phone. “I don’t want to be available 24 hours a day, and it bugs me to see how pervasive mobile phones are,” says Richard Lennon, a 50-year-old librarian. “There is no privacy. My 13- year-old daughter has one that can download movies. Why in God’s name would anyone want to do that?”
Others also dislike the intrusiveness of mobile phones. Howard Miller, a 24-year-old architecture student, used to have one, but gave it up five years ago when he found friends interrupting conversations to take their calls. “I found it really annoying. Then I realised that I was doing it myself, so I gave it up. Also, I hated having to carry it around.” Jeremy Cameron, whose mobile has long since conked out, reckons the whole point of going out is to be unavailable.
Mobile phones can be irritating, there’s no doubt. Even with children under four, Juliet Pelling, 36, doesn’t feel the need for a mobile. “When I was a kid, people couldn’t reach their parents that way,” she says. However, this technology can be invaluable, as she concedes: “Occasionally, I think that if there was an emergency, people should be able to reach me.”
Across a range of expanding technologies, market research shows demand plateauing as refuseniks draw the line. Although the communications regulator, Ofcom, reports that 6 in 10 homes now have digital television, its consumer panel found that less than one in three UK consumers has even heard of the term “digi- tal switchover”. “We have five channels, and that’s it,” says Simon Mundie, a 26-year-old advertising executive. “I like one-off documentaries, but television annoys me. I’d rather read a book.”
Cameron says he knows digital television exists, but that’s about it: “I’ve heard the phrase, but I don’t know what it means. We have four channels — five when the other one works — and that’s more than enough for anyone. And before you ask, no, I can’t set the video recorder.” The irony being, of course, that it is far easier to record digital television, with one press of a button, than it is to scrabble about to find a blank VHS cassette.
Despite benefits such as higher interest rates on internet-only accounts, only one in five people banks online, and little growth is expected, according to the market researcher Mintel. Ofcom’s figures also show that almost half of all small businesses don’t understand the need to access the internet. Even downloading music has lost its charms for some people. A reader survey conducted by Doors in April showed that 1 in 10 of our readers who had tried both legal and illegal downloading had abandoned net music in favour of a return to CDs. So why this refusal, when there are clear advantages to be had?
Clearly, technology is at a crossroads. While the Oxford Internet Survey (Oxis) reports that 70% of internet users thinks computers are important or very important to everyday life, 30% of UK homes don’t even have one. Of those online, 63% believe technology is “making things better”, yet, bafflingly, a quarter of people who use computers do not regard them as important. Among the nation at large, almost one in three (29%) described themselves as complete technophobes when quizzed by pollsters from Continental Research.
Whatever new technology has to offer, a solid rump of the UK cannot or will not engage with it. Charles Osborne, for example, is a 78-year-old journalist who wants neither mobile phone nor digital television nor the internet. Every day, he works happily in a gadget-free basement office on an ancient computer, using only the word-processing function.
Just as the net is not one thing to all people, so the reasons behind people’s lack of enthusiasm for technology vary. The novelist Ronald Frame, 52, is one of many who feel it is being forced upon them.
“I don’t want to submit myself to any more technology than I already do. The world just assumes that you will lay yourself down before this one thing, and I’m a bit tepid about it all.” Others such as Juliet Pelling, with her three children, simply don’t have time, although web shopping can save time.
The more new technology becomes embedded, the luddites argue, the more its shortcomings become evident. Cameron feels that e-mail creates disadvantages. For example, there is, he suggests, such a thing as communicating too quickly, with no time for reflection. Anyway, he says, “I like writing letters, and people like reading them.”
As far as internet refuseniks are concerned, the trends are clear. The most common reason given by those who resist is lack of interest. “They simply can’t see the point,” says Sonia Livingstone, professor of social psychology at the London School of Economics (LSE).
Internet refuseniks follow a clear and predictable pattern. The British Social Attitudes Survey suggests that the older you are, the fewer qualifications you hold and the lower your household income, the less likely you are to be interested. Yet lifestyle is not the whole story: about half think the web is too complicated for them to use fully. “These are people who are marginalised anyway,” says Livingstone. “You could say they have always been marginalised, so what? But if we don’t make these things available to everyone now, there will be a whole generation left out before we do something about it.”
The trouble for those who have fallen on the wrong side of these various digital divides is that new technology is an unstoppable force. It may have become too complex, too pervasive, too unresponsive to real needs, but it is plunging on at full tilt just the same. In January next year, for instance, the BBC will launch its new digital curri- culum, a free online service for children aged 5-16.
Although the government will not allow the Beeb to cover more than half of any one part of the curriculum, this promises to be a powerful, sophisticated and potentially highly effective home-based learning system. It is designed for broadband internet, promises to be wonderfully radical and learner-centred, and will turn previous approaches to education on their head.
What will the unconnected rump do then? Any parent who doesn’t have internet access, let alone broadband, might start wondering what the BBC is doing spending £150m of the licence fee on a service they cannot use and that might help other children — those in connected homes — to get ahead.
As it is, an LSE study by Livingstone, UK Children Go Online, suggests that parents’ lack of internet skills is potentially harming their children’s education. Will the BBC’s new service leave them even further behind? Even Ashley Highfield, the BBC’s gung-ho director of new media and technology, admits that some people will become losers, refusing to be dragged, screaming and kicking, into the 21st century. “The last 10% are going to be difficult to get online. There are lots of reasons: a number of people can’t afford it, are frightened by it or are just not interested.”
Highfield rightly sees the challenge as creating a service so irresistible, so exciting, that people will want to go online in order to enjoy it. He hopes that catch-up television will be that enormous carrot. Part of a new service the BBC is testing, the interactive media player, or iMP, brings tele-vision over the internet to your desktop or laptop. There are two advantages. If you missed a programme that everyone is suddenly talking about, you can download and watch it later; and you have access to an enormous archive of television.
“The two things are extremely compelling, and it’s going to be huge,” says Highfield, who admits that an optimistic attitude goes with the job. “Just as the original Napster begat iTunes, and transformed the music industry, so television is going to be revolutionised over the next 12 to 24 months.”
First, however, the BBC is going to have to convince the likes of Ronald Frame that there is anything worth watching. When his television died, 10 years ago, he didn’t replace it. “I’ve lost interest in the moving image. I know I risk sounding like Dr Johnson being tired of London, but I can’t be bothered to get excited about something just because it’s new. I have all these books I’ve never got round to reading, and you only have one life.”
Whatever Frame’s reservations, new technology has clear potential to transform lives. At the very least, Professor Dutton wants to make sure people know what they are missing. The internet is an “experience technology” that must be used to be understood. “We have evidence in our survey that shows people who are not online don’t perceive themselves to be at any disadvantage. That says to me that they are not making an informed choice.”
The industries that create and promote technology need to make concessions and listen to the people who are not using it as much as to their existing customers. Far from assuming all advances are good, the challenge is to tempt, persuade and convince people that new technologies will enhance their lives. Even Cameron says that if a time comes when it is essential to go online, he will.
“Otherwise, I’ll have to go to the top of a mountain and only come down when I need to buy baked beans. Even then, I’d probably need a satellite phone.”
DOORS TEN POINT CHARTER FOR ACTION
1 Make computing simpler
“For an elderly person, the idea of clicking on this, double-clicking on that and putting in a password is totally alien. Manufacturing companies need to design PC interfaces that make the whole process much simpler” — Catherine Bromley, co-director of the British Social Attitudes Survey.
2 Show that online banking is safe
“If banks are to retain and expand their customer base, they must persuade consumers that it is a safe thing to do” — Forrester, a research company.
3 Create a website if you are a business
“Not having one is almost suicidal. Being online might not necessarily win a company business, but if they are not online, they are not even in the game” — Professor William Dutton, director of the Oxford Internet Institute.
4 Make charges for broadband and dial-up internet more transparent
“People are nervous of receiving big phone bills” — Colette Bowe, chairman of Ofcom’s consumer panel.
5 Offer parents more advice
“Parents are anxious and need offline advice. It’s really a case for joined-up government thinking from the education department, the Home Office and the culture department” — Sonia Livingstone, professor of social psychology, LSE.
6 Market technology to the whole of society, not just the young
“I feel very confused by marketing, and angry that it is not aimed at groups like me” — Colette Bowe.
7 Simplify comparing tariffs between mobile-phone networks
“This is one of consumers’ main complaints, and only 34% have ever changed supplier” — Ofcom report entitled Consumers and the Communications Market.
8 Tailor information about online benefits to marginalised groups
“For those who think ‘What could the internet possibly do for me?’, there needs to be carefully tailored information from voluntary organisations, community groups and local libraries” — Catherine Bromley.
9 Simplify functions on mobiles
“Disabled people ... have twice the difficulty in using mobile phones as the UK average. Consumers over 75 report similar levels of difficulty” — Ofcom’s Consumers and the Communications Market report.
10 Improve online content
“There is a surprising lack of rich, specialised content,” says the BBC’s Ashley Highfield. Sonia Livingstone remarks: “It’s not clear where children can find the best sites.”
THE LUDDITES
Alice Ramsey, 43, a mother of four and part-time photographer who lives in Edinburgh
“I’m not interested in technology and I don’t understand it. I’m an active person. I’m not good at sitting in front of a screen, and after five minutes my eyes get sore. We have a computer — my husband uses the internet for business, and my children do for homework and playing games — but I never use it. I don’t feel the need. I’m not running a business and I don’t want last year’s phone bills on a spreadsheet. I don’t know what else I would use it for.
I have a mobile phone, but I never take it with me. I don’t feel the need to be in constant communication, and I don’t want someone phoning me while I’m in the supermarket.
If I want to talk to someone, I’ll come home and sit with the phone and a cup of coffee. I don’t know if we’ve got digital television — I don’t know what it is. We’ve just got five channels.
I wouldn’t want any more. It’s hard enough to control the children’s time watching television as it is, and I don’t watch much television.
I don’t feel I’m missing out, but I do feel I’m being left behind. More and more people ask if you have e-mail, and I do have it, but I don’t know how to retrieve it, so I just say no.
I think people think I’m odd, but I don’t think you need e-mail if you haven’t got a business.”
AND SHE’S NOT ALONE...
“The internet is a huge part of my working life, so it’s the last thing I want to do when I get home. I don’t feel any need or desire to use it at the end of the day. I don’t feel I’m being left behind. That attitude is exactly what irritates me” — Simon Mundie, 26, advertising executive
“Terence Conran says we overcommunicate, and I think we do so to an absurd degree. I don’t particularly want to subscribe. You have to dig your heels in” — Ronald Frame, 52, novelist
CROSSING THE DIGITAL DIVIDE
1 Engage with the enemy
If you sit down with technology such as a webcam, you might enjoy it, especially if you can video-chat with the grandchildren.
2 Learn a new trick
Investing an hour in learning how to find info online pays dividends — it’s quicker than thumbing through out-of-date books.
3 Read the instructions
A few minutes spent with the quick-start guide can often stop steam pouring out of your ears.
4 Don’t let pride hold you back
Ask for help, rather than saying: “I don’t do technology.” Similarly, showing friends how to use equipment can open up a whole new world for them.
5 Be clear about your needs
Never buy technology because you feel you should. Always consider what it will actually do for you.
6 Remember who’s boss
Don’t allow technology to control your life completely. If you’re with friends, turn the mobile off or leave it at home. The world will not end.
