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Blair finds 'different world' online
 Tony Blair says he has overcome his "technophobia" |
The internet will transform people's lives in the next decade as they increasingly shop and communicate online, the prime minister has predicted.
Tony Blair admitted his computer skills remained "not good at all" but claimed he had started to overcome his technophobia.
He recently embarked on a course to teach himself how to use a PC and find his way around the world wide web.
Since then, visitors to the prime minister's personal office have reported finding him logged on to BBC News Online to catch up with details of his wife's pregnancy.
Mr Blair has now revealed he has another favourite - the Newcastle United site, although he insisted he did not visit it "during office hours".
The prime minister previously used the internet to send flowers to Cherie, who is known to be a proficient computer user, when he began his project to get on the web.
Having discovered some of the net's leisure uses appears to have convinced him new technology will transform society as much as business.
In the past, he has warned companies: "If you don't see the internet as an opportunity, it will be a threat."
On Monday, he told GMTV that he now believed the internet offered new opportunities to improve many areas of modern life.
"I was virtually phobic about it because I find it difficult with technology but I went along and did a course and that got me started," he said.
"Once you begin it and get over the first stages, then you start to realise this thing has got fantastic possibilities and it just opens up new horizons.
"I think this is the transforming technology and what is interesting is that probably in the next 10 or 15 years it will transform people's lives even more than in the last 10 or 15.
"Maybe even sooner than 10 or 15 years, people will do a lot of their shopping on the net, they will do a lot of their communications with people on the net, it just opens up a different world."
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 | 29 Oct 99 | UK Politics |
| Blair has first internet lesson |
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