On 23 March 2012, the Oxford Internet Institute saw stakeholders from a variety of backgrounds, attending our workshop ‘On the Periphery? Low and Discontinued Internet use by Young People in Britain: Drivers, Impacts and Policies’. One of the key themes that emerged over the course of the day was that digital inclusion cannot be addressed without tackling social exclusion, for many of those who are currently not online are also socially excluded. The Government’s recent digital inclusion campaigns seem at first sight to recognise this need. For example, the UK ICT Strategy paper pledges that “The Government will work to make citizen-focused transactional services ‘digital by default’ where appropriate using Directgov as the single domain for citizens to access public services and government information. For those for whom digital channels are less accessible (for example, some older or disadvantaged people) the Government will enable a network of ‘assisted digital’ service providers, such as Post Offices, UK online centres and other local service providers” (§45, UK ICT Strategy 2011). ‘By default’ strategies are at the core of a concept called ‘libertarian paternalism’, which initially was advanced and popularised by two American academics, Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein, and since has been adopted by a number of governments around the world. In the UK, it has inspired the creation of the Cabinet Office’s Behavioural Insight Team, commonly known in Whitehall as the ‘Nudge Unit’. The idea behind the libertarian paternalism concept is that the government gently encourages citizens to act in socially beneficial ways, without infringing their freedom or liberty, and through these nudges it improves economic welfare and well being for the whole of society. Governments nudge by reorganising the context in which citizens make certain decisions, a strategy also referred to as ‘choice architecture’. To quote a common example, it may not be at the forefront of learner drivers’ mind to sign up for the organ donor register, but by asking learner drivers…