In the UK, has the Internet become a Necessity?

[Simster]

I agree. I find that very odd. Maybe they just want to be able to follow their profiles, to laugh at them and feel superior?

In which case, I could understand having ONE such goon amongst your friends, from a purely voyeuristic point of view. However, any more than that is just plain SAD and weird isn't it?

 

[beorhthelm]

necessity in the same context as fresh tap water and electricity.

 

[Gazwag]

And while I take Gwylan's point, not many people have a job which actually requires connection to the internet. Okay I can't work from home without the internet, but then I can just come into the office instead. IMHO, the internet certainly can't be viewed as a necessity to the vast majority of the population.

Our three offices have recently moved onto a hosted server meaning if the interent goes down nobody can work as all our software runs from the server.

 

[mcshane in the 79th]

It's not just what you use the Internet for. It's how all the shops and services you visit/use run their businesses that it would affect.

Sure we could scrap the Internet and survive, but how many companies have completely redeveloped how they operate in the last decade or so as a result of the World Wide Web? It would take a long time to go back to how companies ran themselves before it became so widespread, but they could do it.

So it can't really be classed as a necessity like food and water, but it would be pretty darn difficult to revert back to life without it.

 

[sten_super]

Our three offices have recently moved onto a hosted server meaning if the interent goes down nobody can work as all our software runs from the server.

Ah, sorry, I think we are talking about necessity in slightly different contexts.

I was relating it to BBC News - Living 'costs at least £14,400' for a single person, which I assume is the context in which it was discussed on the news programme that the OP mentioned. In this sense I was talking about it as necessary to domestic life, rather than work.

In terms of work, there are data that we have to have access to the internet to download. Having said that, I believe that before the advent of the internet we were sent such data on a CD through the mail instead.

 

[Tricky Dicky]

In this sense I was talking about it as necessary to domestic life, rather than work.

If we're just talking about domestic, then it certainly makes thing convenient, i.e. I can pay bills whilst sitting here at work, order things from shops, all saving me time which would be difficult to fit in, but obviously I'd manage somehow - I did before.

 

[Gwylan]

Funnily enough, I was thinking this morning about what life was like when I was my daughter's age (7). My family had no car, no washing machine, no Hoover, no fridge, no central heating, no TV, no phone, no hi-fi/record player and as this was the 60s, obviously no computer. We certainly weren't poverty-stricken as this is the way that millions of families lived then. My kids can't get their heads round such a concept as most of those goods would be deemed essential for life now but we all survived and didn't feel ourselves deprived.

Times change and, as someone pointed out earlier, in 20 years time, the Internet will be seen as essential as a fridge.

 

[Tomnorthi]

It's not just what you use the Internet for. It's how all the shops and services you visit/use run their businesses that it would affect.

Sure we could scrap the Internet and survive, but how many companies have completely redeveloped how they operate in the last decade or so as a result of the World Wide Web? It would take a long time to go back to how companies ran themselves before it became so widespread, but they could do it.

So it can't really be classed as a necessity like food and water, but it would be pretty darn difficult to revert back to life without it.

Google uk would die.

 

[Garage_Doors]

It will very soon become a right, as in if you can't afford it (ie on benefits) the government will provide it free.
Like they did with the "free Laptops for children programme".