Fast net access makes it easier to download music tracks

Once upon a time we knew how many computers were connected to the internet because every one of them had its own IP address.

Some larger computers might have had two network connections and so two addresses, but they were rare and special.

Yet even in those days guessing the number of net users was a black art.

A single workstation might be used by several people; and not everyone who used the computer would actually take advantage of its internet connection. Or the same person might use the net from several terminals.

Once the net became a public network, instead of just an academic or government service, keeping track of users became even harder, and so quoted numbers of users varied wildly between different sources.

Today it is next to impossible to count either the computers or the users.

Internet service providers share IP addresses among their customers, even for broadband connections, and many companies hide their internal networks behind firewalls so there is no way to know how many computers each has connected.

As for the number of net users, once you start asking how often someone has to visit a cyber cafe to count, or whether someone reading their e-mail on a mobile should be included if they do not actually have a computer at home, you quickly realise the question is simply unanswerable.

We are forced to rely on surveys and extrapolation instead, polling a few thousand people and using what they say to infer figures for the whole country, and then adding those uncertain numbers together to come up with a global internet using population of 800 million. Give or take a 100 million.

It is a complicated business, even with the best survey methods and good analysis. If Benjamin Disraeli was in parliament today, he might well have complained about "lies, damn lies and net usage data", instead of statistics.

Daily routine

We should therefore treat with caution the claim from Neilsen/NetRatings that there are now more than 100 million net users in Europe, of whom over half have an always on broadband connection.

I can send e-mail, or chat, or even create my own website or blog. Why would anyone want to sit blobbing in front of a passive screen with all that on offer? QUICK GUIDE Broadband

It is a nice round number, and in 10 years' time we will no doubt be encouraged to celebrate the anniversary, but it is not hard data.

However, even imperfect data can sometimes be useful, both for what it reveals and for what it does not say. We may not know the exact numbers, but we can be confident that the trend is upwards, and that broadband is beginning to outstrip dial-up access as the connection method of choice.

If everyone is going online, how is this going to change the way we spend our time? More recent research, this time from Jupiter Research, tells us that a quarter of those of us who surf the web spend less time watching TV.

Programme-makers and broadcast executives may be worried, but this is hardly surprising.

Last August, the US-based Pew Internet & American Life team reported on the way the internet had become embedded in people's daily life in the USA. They found that the net played a part in the daily routines of 88% of online Americans.

More than two-thirds said that they thought the net was a good place to entertain themselves, doing things like playing games, pursuing their hobbies or even reading.

Of particular interest, around one in six (16%) of net users who watch videos, movie previews or cartoons did so online. And they, too, watched less television.

Window on the world

Yet since the commercial internet has been with us for over a decade, and connection speeds have been reasonable for nearly half that time, it might be worth asking a different question: why does TV remain so popular when the net offers so many alternatives?

After all, the web gives me millions of sites and billions of pages. There are cool Flash sites, blogs and discussions and more content than I could ever consume.

Online gaming is luring some away from watching TV

I can send e-mail, or chat, or even create my own website or blog. Why would anyone want to sit blobbing in front of a passive screen with all that on offer?

It is so attractive to talk about the death of television, coming just after the death of newspapers, that we tend to forget to look at how people really live their lives.

The reality is that there are two sorts of screen: those we engage with actively, like the screen of the laptop I am typing on now, and those that are windows onto another world, windows we can watch passively from the sofa.

We need both, because there are times when we want to be drawn into someone else's imagination, when a compelling narrative that will engage without requiring active participation is far more attractive than having to drive the action forward ourselves.

Any online future that does not allow for simple engagement with a well-told story is simply not going to happen, and any assessment of the future of television in a wired world that does not allow for that basic human need is surely going to prove inaccurate.

The technology that delivers the moving images to our screens is changing and will continue to change, and experiments like TV over broadband are already taking place in Hull and now elsewhere.

But TV is going to survive in the networked world, just as books, film and even radio survived in the television-dominated 1970s and 1980s.

Of course, that assumes that there is something worth watching on, because finding an economic model that will support good programmes is the real challenge.