When EL resumed after the summer on September 12th last, this column reported that, according to Nielsen NetRatings, there were 778,000 people using the Internet in Ireland, 20.49 per cent of the population. That figure dated from last May.
In Nielsen's latest figures, the number of people online in Ireland has jumped massively to 941,000, 24.78 per cent of the population. Almost one-in-four of us are using the Internet, and yet there are still people who will happily tell you that this is all a fad, something that will fade away, a CB radio for the digital age.
According to an estimate by Nua (see site of the week), by September 2000, 377.65 million people worldwide were using the Internet. Though the figures for Ireland look impressive, the penetration here is still well behind other European countries such as Iceland, Sweden and Norway, each of which has half of its residents online.
Not far behind those are Denmark, Holland and Finland, all of which have more than two-in-five online. Britain and Austria have about one-in-three each. Belgium has similar figures to ourselves, with Germany, on 21.74 per cent, and France, with 15.26 per cent, falling behind.
As you would expect, the figures for the US are even higher than in Europe. Half of all American households now have Internet access. The fact that this figure is for households is an important one. Many people included in the European figures only have access to the Internet at work, school or college. We have a long way to go yet before we reach US levels of penetration, but we are inexorably heading that way.
Regular readers will know that this column considers e-mail to be the greatest invention since the telephone, and hopefully has convinced some of you to try it for the first time. With email, though, we are even further behind the US. Fifty-six per cent of all Americans are using email, and three-quarters of those are using it every day. The fact that this is greater than the number of people now using paper post in the US tells its own tale.
All of this detail about the current state of play for technology usage is relevant to education because it is through teaching children about computers and the Internet that the numbers online here will start to catch up on other countries. It is catching the attention of politicians as being something that their constituents are interested in (always a sure sign of national importance).
Speaking to the Dail's public accounts committee last month, Fianna Fail TD Sean Ardagh said: "In my constituency of Dublin South Central, there are certain schools with clapped-out computers and other schools have some of the most up-to-date equipment."
Ardagh went on to say that children living in his constituency, which includes such inner city areas as Dolphin's Barn and Fatima Mansions, have less access to computer education than those in more middle-class areas such as Terenure and Templeogue.
This was disputed, however, by John Dennehy, general secretary at the Department of Education and Science, who told the same committee that a study carried out by his department found that there were actually marginally more computers in disadvantaged schools - one for every 16 pupils as opposed to one for every 17 in other schools.
The details of the figures do not even really matter; what matters is that the computers in schools issue is now one that is of importance to politicians.
A recent survey carried out by the MRBI for the Information Society Commission (www.isc.ie), found that 95 per cent of those questioned believe all schoolchildren will be using computers as part of their education within the next 10 years, while 88 per cent think children would have to be familiar with information technologies to get a job.
Computer technology, the Internet and e-mail are here to stay, and it would take a foolhardy person to deny its efficacy. The Internet revolution has only just begun.
