One of the big lessons to be learned from the first down wave of the internet is the importance of using appropriate technology.
In a recent interview the first director of the Oxford Internet Institute admitted that his favourite gadget was a fountain pen. He has tried other ways and finds writing with a pen the best way to marshall his ideas. If that is what is best for him then that's the end of the argument.
One of the causes of the crash of Boo.com, the high-profile retailer that was one of the first to go belly-up during the internet boom, was that its technology was too sophisticated for its targeted market.
Yet a 100% internet booking system is brilliantly appropriate for easyjet, the cut-price airline. It couldn't be successful without it because it enables the company to maximise its "yield management" by having a jungle of different prices at different times of the day and night.
Doing that over the telephone would be a labour-intensive nightmare besides being more expensive. But when all the prices and times are laid before you on the web it works. I find the internet good for booking hotels, especially overseas, but not (yet) much good for ordering wine or for personal banking because doing it over the phone is quicker. And with a mobile you can do it from anywhere.
What a shame then that the big music companies haven't stopped to think about appropriate technology before sending their battalions in to erase all the peer-to-peer file sharing services that have sprung up to enable web users to exchange music or films among themselves.
They simply don't understand that people would be quite happy to pay if they were getting a service that was tailored to their needs -in other words if it was consumer driven and not producer-driven as it is today.
It was reported some months ago that, although there has been a dip in CD sales, this was not so evident among peer-to-peer users whom the record companies are aiming their bullets at.
A report published by Forrester Research yesterday confirmed that the troubles of the music business are due to a lot of factors - like competition from video games and DVDs and the economic recession - but not to downloading.
It suggests that if the music moguls want to get people to pay for downloading music from the web they will have to do it on the terms laid down by the consumers (possibly in a bill of music rights).
This would have to recognise the consumer's right to find music from any label (not just that selected by a cartel of producers) and their right to "burn" their own downloads on to CDs or copy them on to an MP3 player.
What ought to go hand-in-hand with appropriate technology is an appropriate payments system, especially for low-ticket items. In real life people aren't required to take out monthly subscriptions before they are allowed to buy anything. Nor should they on the internet.
At the moment mobile phones , though at an embryonic stage of development, are streets ahead of websites in enabling people to buy things for small amounts of money. Look how we happily pay for a text message with room for only a couple of sentences but resist paying for email even though it might come with a book or even a film as an attachment.
• Victor Keegan is editor of Guardian Online
