Has the internet become indispensable? by D. Hoffman, T. Novak and A. Venkatesh (ACM registration required) is a paper about how the Internet modified our living habits.

We seem to be in the midst of an Internet revolution and entering an era of enhanced digital connectivity. The pace of social change resulting from the diffusion of this technology, both in the U.S. and globally is, by many accounts, dramatic. In less than ten years, the Internet has become indispensable to many people in their daily lives. What are the consequences and implications of this perception? In this article, we consider the idea that the Internet is becoming increasingly essential to families and to society at large, present data supporting our contentions, and develop a conceptual model that allows for the testing of key hypotheses related to Internet indispensability.