Abstract :
Every ten years the Government conducts a census, we thought it might be interesting to see what gadgets UK consumers have in their households. Society has become more gadget-obsessed over the last ten years and if you want proof of this, check the stats. Ten years ago, the Web was exploding, clamshell mobile phones were getting smaller, and you could navigate your virtual aircraft airily over the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center on Microsoft Simulator for Windows. Bill Gates was considered an evil multi-billionaire by some and Steve Jobs wasn´t considered either by anyone. We were gadget-obsessed even back then. The typical household was accumulating more and more TVs. The increase in satellite and cable viewing had meant that teenagers would be less inclined to watch with the family, and more inclined to hole themselves up in their rooms with their own portable sets. The PC would be a large hulk of a machine with a noisy hard drive, a large CRT display and if it was the only one in the house (as it usually would be), it would reside in the living room and its primary function would be email and word processing. Browsing would be a chore thanks to dial-up Internet connections, which tied up the telephone line. The only radios that were available were analogue technology that had changed little in decades. Homes had several radios either as standalone devices or incorporated into body-building ghetto blasters, alarm clock radios and hi-fi units. If the phone line was tied up, you may have been the lucky adult in your household who had a mobile device. Back then people used them to talk to one another. Although beginning to become mainstream thanks to prepay talk plans mobiles were relatively expensive and WAP Internet hardly made these phones smart. In fact, other than computing or CDs, digital was still a rarity with cameras, video cassette recorders and audio cassettes binding us to an analogue century, with its magnetic tape and film. Excluding white goods- the typical household would have about 19 consumer electronic devices (excluding white goods) in the home. Today, that number has increased to almost 30.
