Internet Dropouts

Also in the news today (in the CanWest paper of your choice) was an article about a new study of Canadians' Internet use: 42% have never been online, study says. Statistics Canada has posted a summary along with the complete report (PDF).

Some interesting numbers:

• Close to 80% of non-Internet users were not interested in learning to use the Internet, with cost and access to a computer/Internet being the top two reasons.
• Infrequent Internet users were less likely to do other computer activities like word processing and playing games.
• Most regular Internet users describe their computer skills as very good or excellent, compared to just 20% of infrequent users.

Seems to me that the computer itself--its cost and complexity--is one of the big barriers to entry. It will be interesting to see how these numbers change as the Internet becomes available through cell phones, telephones (Telus now offers a phone that will browse Alberta.com), television, etc., and not exclusively associated with desktop computers. Also important will be silent, always-on connections where people access the network without even knowing it, rather than the clunky dial-up system most people use now.