Think-tanks fight dot com backlash

Four leading think-tanks will today call for the end of the post-dot com backlash that they say is damaging the social and economic potential of IT.

The Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR), Demos, Forum for the Future and iSociety's say it's time for a national debate about technology.

The digital society, the new economy, innovation, e-cities, and network ownership and control are major issues for the UK, they will argue at their 'Beyond the Backlash' conference.

'We are asking how we should be shaping our technology, rather than simply waiting for it to change our world for us, says IPPR director Matthew Taylor.

'We are entering into an era of excessive pessimism and a dangerously pervasive assumption that digital technologies involve socio-economic change only at the margins.

He said the country was in serious danger of missing out on economic and social development.

'The baby is being thrown out with the bath water. In its attempts to reassure the manufacturing sector and distance itself from its early enthusiasm for the knowledge economy, the government may be in danger of allowing the pendulum to swing too far in the opposite direction,' said Taylor.

Ecommerce minister Stephen Timms said: 'Some still hold the view that digital technologies are yet to deliver real benefits to business and citizens. This conference will open up discussion on the real technological opportunities and challenges.

'It will address the UK's ability to be at the forefront, maximising the potential from these opportunities and using them to address the problems facing society in the early 21st century.'

The conference will take place against a background of quietly grwoing optimism.

More than 50 per cent of respondents in the 2002 NCC spending survey predict IT investment will grow next year to represent 1.8 per cent of turnover of end-user organisations.

Fiffty-three per cent of the survey's 306 respondents said IT spending has increased over the past year, and 53 per cent predict further increases next year.

The average spending level was £2,925 per end user, marginally lower than the £3,022 reported in 2001.