It seems that half of all UK homes now have access to the internet, according to the government’s latest survey into net use.

Oftel, the people who regulate telephone companies, found that 12.5 million households now have a dial-up or broadband connection to the net.

There are still lots of people who have a PC at home but aren’t connected to the net, but the trend is pretty clear.

More and more of us are getting online.

This will have made the government happy, because they want everyone to have net access by 2005.

Even so, things aren’t quite sorted yet.

Chances are that your granny isn’t online, and even if she could go to the local library to use the internet there, she won’t bother.

And lots of people don’t get to use the internet at work because their bosses are too mean to pay for a connection for everyone.

Many who can afford the monthly cost of a net connection from home don’t think it’s worth it.

They also worry about getting deluged with spam e-mail or unpleasant websites, or about what their kids will get up to online.

The internet can help

Yet the internet can help people in lots of ways.

If you’re housebound it can keep you in contact with friends, or make it easier for you to get the services you need.

If you’re out of work it can help you find a job.

And if you’re bringing up young children it can put you in touch with other parents, or lead you to help and advice.

If you’ve got a bank account and can pay by direct debit, you can get your gas or electricity more cheaply.

And if you’ve got internet access you can pay less for things, or save time and money by paying bills online instead of taking a trip into town.

However it’s not going to be enough just telling people that they are missing out.

And trying to force everyone online won’t work either.

But we can’t ignore the internet’s importance, or leave millions of people offline when everyone else is benefiting so much.

There will always be some who simply can’t afford to go online, and we need to make sure that libraries and schools give everyone free or cheap access.

But a lot more could be done to make using the net easier, safer and less frightening.

This means making computers simpler and less likely to break.

It means making websites easy to navigate.

It means doing more to stop spam and viruses.

Getting online is now cheap, easy and pretty reliable.

So it’s time to make sure that what people find there is worth having and easy to use.

We just can’t afford to leave the other twelve million houses offline.

How many people do you know who still are not online?
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The year is coming to an end, so I’ve just bought my 2004 diary.

It’s a small, pocket one with a week to each page, just like my 2003 diary, and as soon as I got it I spent a happy fifteen minutes marking people’s birthdays in it.

Some of my friends are surprised that I don’t use a computer diary.

In fact, a few years ago I used Microsoft Outlook to record everything.

I even set up a Yahoo! Calendar account so that I could copy my schedule to a website and find out what I was doing from any net-connected computer.

But I eventually realised that I was spending more time keeping my diary up-to-date than actually doing useful stuff, so I went back to paper.

If I worked in a large organisation then I’m sure I’d want an online calendar so that I could arrange meetings and manage my time properly.

But my life isn’t that complicated.

My paper diary never crashes and doesn’t need batteries or an internet connection to work.

But of course, I’m never going to get around to backing it up, so if I lose it I’m in big trouble.

Copying a computer file is one thing, copying all my appointments by hand is simply too much work.

But I don’t think we should all feel obliged to use computers or the net just because they are there.

Do you still use a paper diary?
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