Coercing people into a Brave New digital World

By Martyn Perks


The Race Online 2012 campaign has just launched its Manifesto for a Networked Nation, which aims to get the entire adult UK population hooked up to the internet before the 2012 London Olympics. The campaign is spearheaded by Martha Lane Fox, a veteran of the online world, having co-founded the successful LastMinute.com travel business during the dot.com boom. She was reappointed UK Digital Champion by the new Lib-Con government in June 2010.

Through research conducted by the consultancy PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), Race Online 2012 found that 10million British adults – one fifth of the population – have never been online in their entire lives. Unbelievable as it sounds to anyone who uses the internet on a regular basis, there are still lots of people out there who have never managed to tweet on Twitter, gabber on Facebook or even read an article on spiked!

Race Online 2012 seems like a worthwhile campaign to allow more of us to enjoy the benefits of the internet. But it is worth asking why this government-endorsed campaign is so keen to bring every single Brit online, and to create a ‘Networked Nation’. It is also worth keeping in mind that there is a tendency, when focusing on the so-called ‘digital divide’, to exaggerate the potential of the internet to transform society, as if removing the divide is enough in itself to cure society of all its ills.

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