If you're not online these days you're a second-class citizen...

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For citizens who are not online, of course, these admissions are harder to come by. Indeed, if the NHS's mailing presumptuously assumes the consent of patients who have access to the internet and a printer, it takes an outrageous liberty with the substantial part of the population that is still classified as "digitally excluded", for whom the process of informing themselves, or opting out, will obviously be more strenuous. Although online access rises all the time and the state is now committed to automating virtually everything beyond the cabinet (though there are rumours Hague has already been done), more than a quarter of adults are still not online, with those excluded far more likely to be poor, or unemployed or old (grants are available to families entitled to free school meals). Ofcom estimates, for example, that 63% of people over 65 live in a household without internet access (50% of those aged 65-74, and 77% of those aged 75 and over). Some, from a group with so much to gain from the savings, contacts and entertainment to be found online, say they can't afford it, but, bafflingly, in an age when the untweeted life is generally acknowledged to be not worth living, there appear to be those who stay offline out of sheer perversity. Full story...

Don't miss:

1. Every Briton to get super-fast broadband, personal webpage?
2. School furnishes each pupil with a personal laptop...
3. Did you know? Some media and internet statistics...
4. WHO planning to tax internet activity! WTF!
5. We can't live without the Internet, say 75% of UK youths...