I recently read an article in the USA Today which said that about one in four American adults don’t use the Internet and that many of these don’t have any desire to go online either. Close to one third of these adults apparently don’t have any plans to use the Internet – ever.
These figures must come as a slap in the face for Mr. Obama and his colleagues as they’ve just set aside a couple of billions for broadband expansion. I’m obviously all for this expansion as I like every improvement of the web. The reason for this alienation of a huge part of the population apparently has to do with costs for switching from dial-up to broadband and the fact that these adults don’t know how to use the Internet.
Ok, I can go along with the fact that people aged 80+ (of course there’s exceptions) might not be a good target group for the web. But what about the rest? Perhaps it’s just me but I would feel handicapped if I wouldn’t have access to the Internet each and every day. And I really mean EACH and every day. I can’t even resist going online when I’m on vacation. You know, just to check my email or browse the web for something totally useless. Anyways… I just think it’s funny how America, the great superpower, is slacking behind on the usage of the Internet. I’m sorry, but sometimes I keep thinking about the good old states as hillbilly-nation (hence the picture)…