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Three decades later, most households have a TV in every room and with more than 200 channels to choose from the act of watching TV has become a solitary occupation rather than a social event.

³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Comedy's Misery Bear using a computer in one of his very popular videos

In 1977, you would have heard Mr Smith the grocer ask Mrs Jones whether she'd watched The Two Ronnies on TV the night before (chances are she had). In 2011, such exchanges are more like to run along the lines of 'Have you seen Will Ferrell's 'Landlord' sketch on YouTube? It's hilarious. I'll send you the link.'

So where can you find comedy - and in particular new comedy - on the web?

The simple answer is everywhere.

But let's start with the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ. Will Saunders is responsible for the content of ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Comedy, visits to which have increased by nearly 350% over the past 18 months.

Will says that by 'clipping it, blogging it and adding to it' the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ is helping audiences to discover new comedy online. "Social media (Twitter, Facebook, Buzzfeed, Tumblr) plays an important role in enabling the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ to talk to audiences about what we make. Social media is about listening as much as telling so we use it to join conversations, source comments and ideas and let people share with us what they find funny (and what they don't)."

I logged onto the microblogging site Twitter just as the first episode of the new ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ1 comedy Mrs Brown's Boys was about to air, and watched as ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Comedy (@bbccomedy) published a stream of tweets that asked the audience to share what they thought about the new show as they were watching it. The 'feedback loop' that Twitter provides is clearly invaluable to the producers of comedy at the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ and elsewhere as they develop content that they hope will prove popular among the people they wish to entertain.

There are many places on the web where you can find out what comedy is hot or not. Plenty of sites attempt to provide a definitive guide to all that's funny on the web. There is so much comedy online now, particularly on video sites such as YouTube and Vimeo, that sites providing a critical filter are becoming increasingly valuable.

But you don't need the support of critics or corporations to put your own comedy online. Some of the biggest hits of YouTube have managed to propel themselves to internet stardom simply by making us web users laugh hard and often.

More established comedians seem to favour Twitter, with the biggest of the UK comedians attracting an incredible number of 'followers' (Sarah Millican: 360,000, Jimmy Carr: 1,900,000, Stephen Fry: 3,900,000 and counting) through a channel that enables them to have completely uninhibited dialogue with fans and critics alike.

I can't finish this article without mentioning the two sites that tower over all the others in terms of both their popularity and influence. The Onion is cited by many as their favourite satirical site, while Chortle is the home of news and video clips featuring anybody who is anybody on the UK comedy scene.

Where the controllers of TV stations once governed what we watched and when we watched it, the web has made us all producers, editors and controllers of the comedy we watch, share and create. Comedy is no longer served up in strict half-hour slices at set times of the day. It is copied, chopped about and made freely and universally available for anyone to view however and whenever they want thanks to the web, and this digital revolution in how comedy is being shared is helping new comedy to break through into the mainstream.

Julie Howell established the world's first online community for people with MS. Since then, Julie has written the first British Standard on web accessibility and has led national campaigns to make the web more accessible to disabled people.

A few years ago, when I was a younger but possibly more idiotic man than I am today, I posted something stupid on the internet. I just didn't think. Sheer embarrassment prevents me from revealing exactly what it was, but suffice to say it didn't make me look big, or indeed clever. Worse: it's still there. I can't get rid of it. I live in fear of someone stumbling across it and confronting me about it. It'll niggle in the back of my mind until either I die, or the internet dies, and frankly I think the internet's going to win.

Did I learn from my experience? Of course not. A couple of months ago I took a photograph of my computer and posted it on Twitter - there was a good reason for this, I promise you - before I suddenly realised that there was a post-it note stuck on my computer that contained my credit card number, the expiry date and the 3-digit security code. All of which were now visible to the world.

And even if I deleted the photo - which of course I did - there was no way of knowing who might have reposted it, copied it, or the number of servers around the world that now contained a pristine copy of my credit card details. The genie was out of the bottle, so I had to make a slightly embarrassed call to my credit card company.

People think of the net as like a public noticeboard, but that's really not the best analogy. If you pen a piece of soppy poetry and make the questionable decision to pin it up in your local library, you can take it down when you realise your catastrophic error. But the consequences can be more far-reaching if you post such a thing online. Material lingers, duplicates and spreads, and your verse can quickly become a self-replicating personal catastrophe as the world is loudly informed that you "wuv your ickle kitten".

Even deleted web pages can be archived by search engines. For example, when you do a Google search, looked for the "Cached" link next to each result - it can often reveal an older version of each page. Services such as FreezePage, meanwhile, exist precisely to capture transient moments on the web and have been used to cause embarrassment. Then there's archive.org - a colossal repository of web content from yesteryear - and Google Groups, which archives all the discussions that have ever taken place on Usenet.

Ten years ago Usenet was the premier online discussion forum, but no-one ever imagined that their online bickering would be unearthed a decade later. What about ill-thought out blog posts that, on reflection, you decided to delete? Automated content collectors may well have grabbed those and sent them whizzing around the net while you're asleep. Of course, none of these services set out to undermine us - they can be fantastically useful - but they can easily double up as sources of shame and regret.

Social networking sites make things even more problematic. They constantly badger us to share information about ourselves and others, and in many cases we're unaware that these things are visible until someone contacts us and says "er, did you know that there's a picture of you being sick at a wedding on Facebook?" Cue a personal plea to the person who uploaded it; but there's no guarantee they'll remove it.

And you can unwittingly do this kind of thing yourself without realising, too. Last.fm is a good example: it's a service that shows the world a list of what you've been listening to on your iPod or your computer, and can provide a fascinating data set about your listening habits. But do you want the world to know that you spent one Saturday afternoon listening to The Wombles on repeat? Probably not.

There are many who'll post things online while breezily saying that they have nothing to hide. But they may change their tune when a potential employer discovers that they once built an online shrine to a member of Girls Aloud, for example. It's probably not mentioned in their CV, but, thanks to the internet, it may as well have been.

Because the internet's a wild beast you can't control: stuff you're desperately looking for might be impossible to find, but the things you dearly wish would disappear forever can remain stubbornly, embarrassingly visible. Fortunately, most of the information we put out there is frivolous and unimportant - but it's always good to think twice before clicking "send".

If you'd like to learn more about etiquette and libel on social networks, have a look at our new Social Media Basics course.

Rhodri Marsden is a writer and musician who regularly details his fascination and exasperation with modern technology and the internet for both The Independent and ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ 6Music.

Well it's been two weeks since I ordered my new smartphone from my not-so-smart service provider and I'm still waiting.

To cut a long story short, it wasn't delivered on time, then it was cancelled and now it's out of stock. Such is the demand for these miniature mobile computers that poor social-network-a-holic commuters like me are left feeling like their whole life hangs in the balance while their existing device heads into the 'stupid phone' bracket.

A thousand questions are running through my already panicked mind. How will I wake up in the morning? What will I do on the train to pass the time? How will I even know what train to get or where to walk when I get off it? My palms start to sweat, my pulse races. Must find a life, err, I mean phone.

After a two year relationship with my current model, it rests in my hands ready to take its final breath. The start-up time has tripled, the case is scratched and my email takes a whole 90 seconds to load. NINETY SECONDS?! I might as well be waiting for a tube!

Like many consumers wanting the next best thing I'm not too busy, I'm just impatient and let's face it, a little bit lazy.

So what exactly are smartphones and how have we progressed from being impressed by an incorporated calendar and game of Snake (remember that?) to not being satisfied until the world fits neatly in our pockets in the form of a mini-computer? It all started with Simon.

Simon says

Simon was the first smartphone - a rather stocky touchscreen model put on the market in 1994 for a whopping 900 US dollars. It had a calendar, address book, games and email, but the term smartphone wasn't actually used until 1997 and has really only been part of standard phone lingo in the last five years with the touchscreen mobile handsets.

We're now being introduced to a new generation of smartphones that can be used as computers by linking them up to a monitor. But that sounds far too clever for me, and I'm not a fan of carrying around a projector when a magnifying glass will do.

Nice apps

A smartphone wouldn't be half as smart without its applications. Apps can be downloaded via 3G or wireless and some (often games) run independently of any data connection. Navigation apps and those that run off information feeds (like news or transport updates) will need some form of data connection.

There are price comparison apps to check an item you want isn't cheaper elsewhere; you can track where your friends are; you can even - with augmented reality - point your phone at the sky and know what constellations you're looking at or how a sofa would look in your lounge. There are general apps to help with transport and weather and there are branded apps that allow you to log on to firms and, say, track goods deliveries (although I hasten to add it can't actually speed up the manual part of this process). I couldn't live without my navigation apps. Leaving the house with just an address and my phone to guide me is a real timesaver, but I really should try to be less reliant on it. If my phone died tomorrow, I wouldn't even know the way to its funeral!

As with all portable technology though, personal security should be a key concern. When buying apps, read carefully who you're buying from and how much of your information they will have (this should all be in the T&Cs before you buy). If you use location apps (the ones that tell all your friends where you've just 'checked in') be aware who you're allowing to see this. Most importantly, remember that if your 'phone is your life' it will contain a vast amount of information about you, your work and your friends and family. Storing passwords and bank details is not a good idea. Even if you report the phone missing or stolen and your network blocks it from making and receiving calls, data may still be stored on it so be mindful of this and password-protect it if possible.

Unfortunately there isn't a smartphone app that will make a new one miraculously appear, so I'm going to have to continue using one the old-fashioned way and scream down it until a new one arrives.

When I first became interested in filmmaking, I felt intimidated by the amount of equipment I thought I'd need to get started. A film camera; monitors; lighting equipment; microphones; editing desks; miles of wire. Making a film seemed like a complex, time consuming, expensive thing to do.

Nowadays, you don't even need to own a camcorder as many mobile phones have a video recording feature. So it's relatively easy to get some friends together and get shooting. After collecting your footage, you can cut it together using editing software that now comes built in to most computers or laptops. Then you can upload it to a video-sharing website, and find out what the world thinks of it!

So where to start? First, you need to get inspired. The best way is simple: watch plenty of films! So look through video-sharing websites like YouTube, Vimeo, or check out the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ's Film Network, which has a host of fantastic shorts by up and coming directors (I especially loved this one, Conversation Piece). Another great website, that does exactly what it says on the tin, is Short of the Week.

Before shooting, it helps if you write a script, even if it's some notes outlining what will happen in your film. The ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ's Writers Room website is chock full of tips and scripts, including this useful page on how to write short films. You can also find straightforward advice from websites like Wikihow.com. To keep costs low, think about stories that could be told in just one location, with only a few characters, saving the more ambitious stories (featuring explosive action sequences, or that all important dinosaur shot perhaps) for later in your career!

Once you've got a story, it's time to choose the actors. You could get a group of your friends together, giving them the roles they seem most suited to. Or you could go further than that. Raindance have a really useful site full of tips for indie filmmakers.

Once you're shooting, how do you choose the best angles for filming a scene? Microfilmmaker magazine has good advice on how to get 'coverage'– which means filming different angles and shots (such 'close ups') so that when you come to edit, you can create an interesting-looking scene.

Once you've got all your footage, download it to your computer before importing it into your computer's editing programme and start editing. Windows computers have Windows Movie Maker built in as standard, while Apple computers contain iMovie. Both programmes are easy to use, and once you've given them a try, you could look to invest in more advanced editing software.

Once you've finished editing your film, it's time to upload! You'll need to convert (or 'export') it into a file type that your video-sharing website accepts, often MPEG4, .AVI or .MOV files. If in doubt, look at the site's 'help' or 'support' sections. Then give your film a snappy title, add some 'tags' to describe what it's about, and you're ready to send it out into the great unknown!

To help more people see your work, you could add a link to your film on your Facebook or Twitter page, email the link to your friends, or post it to an internet message board!

It's worth remembering that you don't have to make a film that tells a conventional story with a beginning, middle and end. You could make anything at all. For example, one YouTube user made a film where he demonstrates 41 different facial expressions!

Once you've got some experience, you might be interested in more advanced filmmaking advice. Vimeo have just launched an online film school covering all kinds of filmmaking techniques. The New York Video School is also useful, with a range of videos covering every aspect of filmmaking.

You might be interested in getting further training, and if so, this ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Film Network page has a host of useful links to training organisations, courses and film schools.

Making films isn't easy - there's a lot to think about. But once you break each aspect of filmmaking down, it gets simpler and you can find a way through the process. Don't be afraid to make mistakes, and learn from them. Good luck, and if you win an Oscar one day, don't forget to mention you read this article!

Charlie is a journalist and scriptwriter specialising in articles and films featuring deaf culture and sign language. He has written for the Guardian online and has contributed to programmes for Radio 4, while his films have won international awards. He also works in the arts, helping to make theatre accessible for deaf people.