ABSTRACT
The mass adoption of the Internet in Britain only occurred towards the end of the dot-com bubble, and persisted long after it had burst. The take-off moment was the summer of 1999. Between early 1999 and 2002, the proportion of UK households with Internet access soared from 13 per cent to 46 per cent (Family Expenditure Survey 2000; Office for National Statistics 2008). By 2008, this had increased to 65 per cent (Office for National Statistics 2008). Thus, in just under a decade, those with ready Internet access had grown from a small minority to two thirds of the nation – a shift comparable in scale and significance to the growth of television ownership during the 1950s. Underpinning this quiet revolution was the rapid diffusion of household computer ownership (from just over half of homes in 2002 to 70 per cent by 2007) (Office of Telecommunications 2002; Office for National Statistics 2007).
