Where in the world does the average citizen spend just two hours a week online? An isolated backwater, perhaps? Or maybe netizen figures from a far-off land trapped in a time bubble of its own desiring? Well, close. This bastion of digital indifference is Italy, one of our closest neighbours, a super-rich G7 nation and homeland to the inventors of the telephone and radio.

Some think this technophobia is a good thing, preserving the Italy of laid-back "click with friends and family, not a mouse" yore. Tourists for one find the low-tech lifestyle enchanting.



Turning off the net

Others feel it has put the country at a huge disadvantage, flinging it far over the wrong side of the digital divide where Italy will, in economic terms at least, continue to languish as the ageing, increasingly impoverished sick man of Europe.

And if moribund economies are measured by a lack of IT skills, high-speed connections and e-commerce, then Italy is very sick indeed.

The median amount of time Italian internet users spend online has actually decreased between 2007 and 2008, according to one survey by tech trend specialists JupiterResearch.

Interestingly, what that survey suggests is that although there is more internet connectivity than ever in Italy, residents are actually spurning the net.

Could it be that Italians have better things to do? Face-to-face networking, old-fashioned chat and time to share news and gossip over a game of cards in the shade of a village piazza, perhaps - the same things that draw thousands weary of net-driven modern life to Italy every year?

Information technology definitely presents a dilemma for many Italians, says Paolo Di Croce, the secretary of Slow Food International, who advocates a little less rush in all our busy lives. He believes technology has its place but should not overshadow, for example, the emphasis placed on real-time relationships or physical communities.

"The personal element in Italian life is something that will not be exorcised. So we have to find the right balance. Just as with the Slow Food movement and its globalisation, the web and email have become our major tools. Without internet we are not possible, but we must use them wisely," he says. "If you can't survive without sending 50 mails a day, without becoming a slave to the BlackBerry - this goes against our philosophy."

That Italy produced the Slow movement in the first place indicates that there was always going to be some resistance to demands for instant results, efficiency, 24/7 and convenience. And it's not as though Italy doesn't have form in its resistance to modern-day technology concerns and pressures: it spent the least of all the developed countries on fixing the millennium bug. In the event, no problems worth reporting were experienced.

Seeing how the use of IT has often actually increased our workload and complicated daily life, some on the side of the more demanding, tech-reliant digital divide are eyeing enviously Italy's less digitised, less demanding work practices. Such practices may, in the long run, even be good for business.

Just as financial globalisation allowed a few to hijack our banking systems, Italy claims its banks are now in better shape because their less tech-savvy institutions do things the old way.

"America and the UK used to say the Italian banks were backwards, but it turns out we now have the soundest banks in Europe," said Italy's finance minister, Giulio Tremonti, following the global financial crisis.

Italy may suffer in other ways - creaking bureaucracy, protectionism, inefficiency and low growth - but shows less of the malaise that comes with overexposure to digital lifestyles or unregulated internet that the rest of the west is suffering.

Meanwhile, as the internet savvy suffer info overload, Italy continues with older IT practices that many of the digital generation would find puzzling - Flash-infested websites that are less-than-functional shop windows, a sometimes poor response to emails and a bureaucracy that has made it painfully slow and expensive to bring email to the masses.

Domenico Condello, the technical consultant to a company that is attempting to bring the internet to unconnected hills 30 miles east of Rome, Comunita Montana dell'Aniene, says it has been a huge struggle to cut red tape holding back Italy's answer to feeding broadband to its hilly regions - a fast WiMax service.

"There is pent-up demand here," he says. "Fast WiMax services such as ours should revolutionise the internet in Italy." But he admits the start has been slow and that probably only the young will be interested in using the service as it rolls out this autumn.

Italy's half-hearted adoption of the internet and the older generation's failure to grasp the importance of IT to a future economy has frustrated many youngsters so much that they simply give up and go abroad, says Bernhard Warner, who runs a tech consultancy in Rome.

Art and history

"But," adds the American expatriate, who swears by his high-speed web connection: "There are certainly things to be learnt from the Italian way of doing things.

"I can't see myself living anywhere else. Here, you can walk beyond your desk and realise there is more to life than tech things. Being surrounded by such art and history keeps your perspective fresh. I'm pleased by the Italian sensibility."

But even in the cities, he points out, where there may be broadband, the cost makes it a luxury for most Italians with their lower disposable incomes than the UK. "The preferred way to contact is the mobile for most. So far the net has been a tool for better-paid young professionals," says Warner. It's a far cry from internet being as available as "air and water", which is how the EU recently referred to its policy on broadband adoption.

Italy's new government under Berlusconi is probably not helping. The last election was about halting globalisation, protecting an inward-looking Italy, largely arguing against free trade and the opening of international markets - the internet being a large part of that.

Many who disagree with those policies have abandoned the country, leaving il bel paese - the beautiful country - to decide if it really does prefer life in the past - unhurried, and happily unwired.