IN FIVE years’ time, says Andy Grove, the chairman of Intel, all companies will be Internet companies, or they won’t be companies at all. Just another example of the arrogance and exaggeration the information-technology industry is notorious for? Yes, in the sense that Mr Grove is as keen as the next chip maker to scare customers into buying his products. No, in the sense that, allowing for a little artistic licence, he is probably right.

The Internet is said to be both over-hyped and undervalued. Ask any signed-up member of the “digirati”, and you will be told that the Internet is the most transforming invention in human history. It has the capacity to change everything—the way we work, the way we learn and play, even, maybe, the way we sleep or have sex. What is more, it is doing so at far greater speed than the other great disruptive technologies of the 20th century, such as electricity, the telephone and the car.

Yet, nearly five years since the Internet developed mass-market potential with the invention of a simple-to-use browser for surfing the World Wide Web, it is easy to overstate its effect on the daily lives of ordinary people. Even in the United States, the most wired country in the world, most people still lack, or choose not to have, Internet access. And even for most of those who have access both at home and in the office, the Internet has proved more of an addition to their lives—sometimes useful, sometimes entertaining, often frustrating—than a genuine transformation.

Everybody loves e-mail; if you are a teenage girl, chat is cool; and the ability to