When the New Economy was not doing so badly, initiatives to bring older people into the world of the Internet boomed.
Special Web sites for older people sprang up as funds rolled in from the federal government and private sponsors. Now, two years later, money is tighter and projects are battling to survive.
For most older people, the World Wide Web remains an unknown entity.
But not for Alfred Rosenthal, from Frankfurt. The 88-year-old is to become a teacher for old people wanting to learn about the Internet. His main reason for being online is to maintain contact with friends and relatives in the US and Israel.
At the end of September, he and his wife Gerda moved into an old people's home. Here he will introduce other old people to the intricacies of the Internet.
Rosenthal belongs to the 5.7 percent of over-70s in Germany who occasionally use the Internet. Among the over 60s, the proportion is 14 percent while in the age group from 50 to 60 the figure rises to 34.1 percent, according to official government figures.
By comparison, 68.6 percent of those between 20 and 29 use the Internet.
The figures reveal that many people aged 50 either shrink from using the Internet or simply have no interest in it.
Kerstin Hendess is press spokesperson for Feierabend.com, which claims to be the largest online club for old people in the German language.
The average age of the 35,000 members in this Frankfurt-based club is 61. Surprisingly, more than half are women. Hendess describes members as being generally "well-off, curious and open to new technologies".
It is notable that a high proportion are academics.
Manfred Laske is the manager of VSiW, an organization which aims to help old people cope with the modern knowledge-based society.
VSiW wants to introduce the Internet to old people. The organisation has a bus containing 13 Internet work stations. The bus can be can be sent from place to place where older people can be taught the basics on the Internet world by VSiW specialists.
But Laske does not predict a world of old people surfing on the the Net in the immediate future.
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