'Get Online Week' began yesterday in a new campaign to encourage the remaining 9 million people in the UK who have never connected to the Internet to take the first step.
The UK's 'Digital Champion' Martha Lane Fox, entrepreneur and co-founder of lastminute.com, is heading the week-long event as part of the Race Online 2012 campaign with a string of media appearances across the country. "While 30m of us regularly use the internet, there are still more than 9m adults in the UK who have never gone online," explained Lane Fox on her blog.
"Getting people to engage with the internet is not only a weapon against poverty, it’s a fundamental skill that everyone needs to have if they are to get the same opportunities as those who use the internet every day."
Lane Fox's also revealed that her own father Robin was one of the elder generation that had yet to "embrace the full magic of technology" and that he hadn't softened much in recent years. Having shown her journalist father the original business plan for lastminute.com, his only comment was that "there are 15 split infinitives in this document."
In an attempt to tackle the un-wired within her own family. Lane Fox bargained with her father, agreeing to accompany him to the cinema to see Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, in exchange for a web lesson. Financial Times gardening correspondent for 40 years, Lane Fox isn't sure she can convince him of the value of the Internet , despite a Facebook group dedicated to her father.
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