Are Internet Refuseniks a Problem?
A Reuters article today entitled "Many Americans see little point to Web?" provides some interesting facts about internet holdouts:
A little under one-third of U.S. households have no Internet access and do not plan to get it, with most of the holdouts seeing little use for it in their lives, according to a survey released on Friday. Park Associates, a Dallas-based technology market research firm, said 29 percent of U.S. households, or 31 million homes, do not have Internet access and do not intend to subscribe to an Internet service over the next 12 months.
That's the what. Here's the why:
The second annual National Technology Scan conducted by Park found the main reason potential customers say they do not subscribe to the Internet is because of the low value to their daily lives they perceive rather than concerns over cost. Forty-four percent of these households say they are not interested in anything on the Internet, versus just 22 percent who say they cannot afford a computer or the cost of Internet service, the survey showed. The answer "I'm not sure how to use the Internet" came from 17 percent of participants who do not subscribe. The response "I do all my e-commerce shopping and YouTube-watching at work" was cited by 14 percent of Internet-access refuseniks. Three percent said the Internet doesn't reach their homes
And of course there's someone at work on the "how", i.e. how to fix this apparent problem:
The industry continues to chip away at the core of nonsubscribers, but has a ways to go," said John Barrett, director of research at Parks Associates. "Entertainment applications will be the key. If anything will pull in the holdouts, it's going to be applications that make the Internet more akin to pay TV," he predicted.
Commentary
Not to put too fine a point on it, but this article misses the point. Language like "Refuseniks", non-subscribers, and holdouts frames the situation as a problem. You can almost hear Parks Associates' associates wondering aloud "What's wrong with these people?" And if they are, then the problem is with them, or more appropriately their underlying assumption about the internet's eventual penetration rate in the US.
Given that there is so much overlap between what the big three provide, i.e. TV, radio, and telephone and cellphones, and how much easier they are to use, there is little reason to think that internet penetration will reach anything close to 100% anytime in the next generation. In fact, figures for Europe and the rest of the world are leave little cause for optimism about 90% + home penetration rates being achieved here or anywhere in my lifetime.
Making the web more like TV, more of an entertainment platform, could drive more adoption. But in some ways it also makes the web less the web. Increased in internet surveillance at the workplace might help a little. But in the final analysis, it won't be enough to push penetration rates as high as some would like. For a long time to come, and for a variety of reasons, a not-insignificant fraction of the population simply won't want to surf where they sleep. As such is their privilege.
Tags: 
internet | 
technology | 
web