The government’s latest report, 'Enabling a Digitally United Kingdom', has once again highlighted how roughly half of the country's population is still refusing to adopt modern technology:

The Alliance for Digital Inclusion has been charged with finding ways of persuading the 48% of refuseniks to use the net and other new technologies. The alliance is led by the charity Citizens Online and founders include BT, AOL, Microsoft and Intel.

The government report identifies the groups at most at risk of becoming farther excluded. This includes older people, those from lower socio-economic groups, the unemployed and the disabled.

Speaking at the launch of the ADI, Minister for the Cabinet Office Ruth Kelly shared some of the reports findings. "For older people, the integration of electronic and traditional health and social services may be a driver for digital take-up. And for people from lower socio-economic groups, education, housing and employment represent potential powerful drivers for digital take-up," she said.

Speaking from personal experience at trying to help new adopters into the online realm, most that refuse to use it find the greatest difficulty being use of the technology itself. ISPr also noted this bit from the BBC News Online item:

"The solution is not getting everyone a PC. The starting point has to be to get people motivated."

Yes and no because if you talk about the benefits to most people then they do recognise them quite easily, but again the problems remains either 1) No computer or 2) The overly complex nature of using computers.

Given current taxes and the growing pension’s crisis, quite how the government can expect certain groups to get online without the money to do so is beyond us.