Debate: Should the internet be compulsory?

DeZmond

Junior Administrator
DeZmond's Debate: March 3 2006
Should the internet be compulsory?

Denmark, it seems, is a remarkable country. My campaign led it to have an empire covering Britain to middle-eastern Asia. But enough about Medieval Total War... ;)

Denmark has chosen to make some of it's state services online-only (source) and this got me thinking: would this be a good idea for the country you live in?

So, for example, if you wanted to fill out a tax form you'd have to do it online rather than on paper. Or if you wanted to collect benefits, you'd set it up to deposit into your bank account automatically.

Would you be happy to see such a system introduced where you live, and what do you think about the potential for misuse?

Answers on the back of a UTP packet header (or alternatively reply in the usual sense :p).​
 

BiG D

Administrator
Staff member
Based on what I know about internet security, and the security of similar government run services on the internet, no. Bad idea.
 
E

elDiablo

Guest
If they gave everyone free access (via libraries, etc.) with free training on how to use the systems, then it _could_ work. However, it would cost a bomb, and trying to teach people who have done something a certain way their whole lives would be fun...

Edit - Darn you Ronin Storm for getting there like 10 seconds before me :P
 

Wraith

Active Member
DeZmond said:
DeZmond's Debate: March 3 2006
Should the internet be compulsory?

Denmark, it seems, is a remarkable country. My campaign led it to have an empire covering Britain to middle-eastern Asia. But enough about Medieval Total War... ;)

Denmark has chosen to make some of it's state services online-only (source) and this got me thinking: would this be a good idea for the country you live in?

So, for example, if you wanted to fill out a tax form you'd have to do it online rather than on paper. Or if you wanted to collect benefits, you'd set it up to deposit into your bank account automatically.

Would you be happy to see such a system introduced where you live, and what do you think about the potential for misuse?

Answers on the back of a UTP packet header (or alternatively reply in the usual sense :p).​

The UK government is already heading in this direction. Companies now have the option of filing lots of forms online - payroll end of year forms, P45's, P60's, S363a Annual Returns etc. On the payroll side of things for example, at the moment it's still optional for "small" employers (<50 employees), but any company with more than that has to file online already.

Source.

Wraith
 

Taffy

New Member
Ronin Storm said:
I wonder how true that is? After all, many public libraries offer a web browsing facility.

But there are lots of people who shudder at the word library ;)

And besides, our hands are developed for writing. It's a bad idea to lose this skill completely, which is why our school doesn't allow people to bring laptops into school. That and insurance 'issues'.
 

Pestcontrol

In Cryo Sleep
Making all sorts of official services available online is good, the more the better. But mandatory? You could do it for businesses easily, but for the common man, there's still too many (elderly) who simply wouldn't have a clue how to do it, i'd like to know how the Danish authorities plan to accomodate for all these people.

Especially things like benefits are often for people who don't have the means to manage everything electronically, or even have a bank account.
 

Carth

In Cryo Sleep
Making services available online is a good idea. Making them only available online is a bad idea. For one thing, what happens if the system breaks? With public libraries everyone can have access to the internet, but not everyone knows how, or has any experience of computers. Some people are scared of them (the type who say the internet should be "switched off" because they only hear about it in the news, and haven't used it themselves).

80 year old granny who can't even operate the VCR shouldn't be made to down to a library and work out exactly how to use a computer and then navigate the internet, and make sure it's secure, just to get her vote in.

That secure point is another reason. If you make services available on the internet, they are used by internet users. If everyone HAD to use the internet, I bet it would pose many more security risks. Some people (I'm not joking here), don't look at the address bar. I can't believe phishing works.. how can you be so stupid to enter your details on a website that has a different address. But people do.
 

Ronin Storm

Administrator
Staff member
elDiablo said:
However, it would cost a bomb, and trying to teach people who have done something a certain way their whole lives would be fun...

That said, this is exactly what our education system is for... except not for those people who are no longer in education. Broadly, our education system is tailored over time to ensure that people come out of school with certain basic skills. Clearly it doesn't work across the board but we all came out of school knowing one end of the keyboard from the other, didn't we? In a decade or so I wouldn't be surprised if people come out of school knowing a trick or two on how to use Internet search engines or shopping web sites. Gradually these newly trained people replace the untrained people (over a number of decades) and so our society advances in what we expect from it across the board.

Of course, some people always sit outside the bracket of "what we can expect", both above and below. I don't believe it is in the nature of many communities to accomodate those people, however, so it may be fruitless trying to look at this in terms of 100% coverage, just 90% or so.
 

Haven

Administrator
Staff member
The school I went to taught one year of basic programming and computer usage (on BBC micro's) at the age of 11. After that point there was no IT on the curriculum unless you happened to be doing it as a GCSE.

In short I learnt nothing about computer at school although I'd hope that I was in the minority here and I certainly expect that things have changed. It wasn't until I got to university that I got my first email account and had to figure things out for myself.

Back to the broader topic of should this be compulsory. I dont think it would be realistic to get everyone the access and the knowledge required to do this just yet. I think we've 2 generations (at least) who have not grown up with computes and it will be another 40 years before we have a high enough computer literacy level across all ages to make it an effective proposition. Of course by then I expect we will have lost our paper currency and (if we haven't all drowned due to global warming or been invaded by america) the political system could be very different indeed from what we see today.
 

DocBot

Administrator
Staff member
We have special computer basics classes for, er, old people, in the libraries. And I don't know how it works in the UK, but in Cork they had one very non-accessible library. Here in gothenburg (pop. 5-600.000) we have 26 libraries plus a couple of "book buses" that drive around to people who lives a bit off. And I do believe they have internet access on those buses too.
 

Gopha

In Cryo Sleep
Taffy said:
But there are lots of people who shudder at the word library ;)

And besides, our hands are developed for writing. It's a bad idea to lose this skill completely, which is why our school doesn't allow people to bring laptops into school. That and insurance 'issues'.
stop copying phrases from MR Riches lol AkA ZIDANE! (start dishing out the fridays)
 

Gopha

In Cryo Sleep
damn straight, anyhoo basically we hsudnt rely on computers for everything, electricity isnt trustworthy, it can cut out at anytime
 

Ronin Storm

Administrator
Staff member
Gopha said:
electricity isnt trustworthy, it can cut out at anytime

Says who? Electricity is really easy to make -- you can build your own batteries at home with only fairly basic chemicals, for example. The difficulty is making enough for our society without totally wrecking our environment. I don't think that electricity being available is really a core problem for this.
 

Macca

Member
Hmm I have to agree with most people on this one. It is a good idea to have the option to do everything online but not compulsory. On the matter of what Ronin Storm said on young people being taught about computers and so in several decades most people will be computer literate, well who's to say that in 30 or 40 years some new machine isn't invented and we will have to do everything on that. Then we would be the "elderly" people of today and would have no experiance.

I think there will always be a group of people in society that will always prefer to use pen and paper.
 
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