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Social Changes & Internet Access In The Third World
DiZNoG asks: "I'm curious about the social acceptability of Internet access and use in third-world countries such as Pakistan and Ethiopia. I realize that actually starting an ISP in these places would be difficult technologically, but what are the social implications? We here in the U.S. have become accustomed to the Net, but what about those in less-developed countries? How would society react to such technology? And how about those countries' governments? Do any of your readers have any information?" In addition to monetary reasons, there seems to be some degree of "cultural friction" when it comes to adopting Internet access in many regions of the world. Your thoughts?
You really need to kick the 2 billion dollar German submarine habit; you'll find it does wonders.
No, bet your still a fat spod.
No give em shovels, give em tractors and then teach them in their own language on how to utilise these things. Then you can start thinking about electric power, internet access and the like.
You're all talking about the poor copuntries of
the world and let's face it, most the of the
countries dont even have sanitary living
conditions so the internet is really last in their list of priorities.
Then you have a country like France which is very
industrialized but hasnt had a huge rush of people
going out and 'discovering the joys of the weeb'.
Why?
Phone prices.
When you pay per minute for local calls, you dont spend hours mindlessly surfing the WWMall.
Heck! They dont even have that ameican problem of having to get a second line because the teenagers are talking on the phone all the time.
THAT is the single biggest stumbling block there.
And after having spent 1 year in Italy, I can tell you that finding places to send e-mail from wasnt hard but god forbid you are outside the big cites....Calabria and Sicily are wonderful places but definitely not tech ready...or tech. needy.
WHen I was sitting in a cafe in Sardinia, a man (own small bakery) asked me how the net could help his life and I tried to give him examples and show him on my laptop...
Everybody around was impressed by the technology but no one thought that it could do anything but waste their time.....its often hard to disagree.
Ummm, in many third-world countries, the media is routinely harrassed and jailed for printing material contrary to the government's position. . .are we 'sposed to believe this routinely happens in the US?
I'm guessing you don't want to see the difference.
I Eastern Europe might be a good place to start,
Dude, at least the western half of eastern europe is not very far behind say, spain (if behind at all). Competition among ISP's is very hard, and the market is growing like crazy.
Anyway, my feelings are that politically there are a ton of barriers. I can just imagine some ISP owner in Pakistan or Saudi Arabia getting hanged or beheaded because of something he had no control over.
New Hampshire is a hollow shell of what it was before the Internet. The once-vibrant boardwalk in Weirs Beach is this very minute all boarded up and desolate. There is even a democrat as governor! And apparently they have real weird religious cults near Gilford. What will become of them, I ask? What indeed?
At which point he'll ask if he can use the internet to find cheaper liquor and drugs. If the answer is no, he'll lose interest.
Personally, I think India has been doing a pretty good job of pumping out porn.
*SNARF*!
Better to be a righteous son of Allah than a corrupt unrighteous son of a bitch.
The infrastructure probably would not be able to support either the ISP's, or the geek culture to support a large internet presence... only time will tell how new entries into the internet arena fare.
Damn white fluffy vermin critters always gettin loose and grazin up all my land 'n' starvin my cattle. Well, that's OK. We know how to deal with rustlers and the free roamers round these parts.
"recent debacle where the gov paid money for anti-drug messages to be placed into shows"
Also, regarding foreign wars, the media often just runs over to the US embassy or military forces for information.
They could get perfectly good information regarding what really is happening from people walking around cities as well as church sources and provide balanced information - but that isn't going to happen any time soon. The media also knows that it is in their best interest to distort certain facts, or present an extremely US biased story, or fail to report on a story at all (and no, im not talking conspiracy, I'm talking about gatekeepers to mass media who knowingly or unknowingly deny information). I won't even get into propaganda from the govt (see extremely biased perspectives or outright lies for the purpose of certain wars) which manufactures consent of the people.
As well, in public school at least, we are taught to be very nationalistic as well as almost never taught about corruption or problems in government. That way its so much easier for them to manufacture consent for what they do domestically as well as internationally. Education is part of the problem -- but even universities are often centers of indoctrination for rote learning sheep. Note that, again, I'm not claiming conspiracy theories -- just that public schools often shove info into students brains without teaching them to logically think by themselves.
He's a moron. In the past, I have had to reply to some of his idiotic notions that were completely ignorant of basic macro and micro economics (of which, much is common sense).
So what exactly did I post about India that was, as you say, bullshit?
1) Education. The number of Indian graduates is unimportant. The ones that are really smart are, as we all know, trying to leave the country. What matters is basic education. The illiteracy rate in India is what, less than 75%. This is worse than parts of Africa, and the real tragedy is that there was a time when India's literacy rate was ahead of South East Asia and Korea.
Education for girls is a joke.
Until primary and secondary education are fixed, having a few good colleges to educate the kids of the elite is irrelevant.
2)You admit there is serious corruption. You also don't seem especially perturbed by it. Like I said, stupid rulers, stupid inhabitants. Countless studies have shown that real economic growth depends on property rights, government transparency and the rule of law. As long as the bulk of the inhabitants of a country continue to nod and wink at corruption treating it as a joke, or regarding themselves as special because they know how to work around the system, the country is doomed to poverty.
3) India's economy is barely integrated into the world, let along South East Asia. If you're going to claim it would have been affected by the SEAsian crisis, you might as well claim that Mexico or South Africa would have been affected.
The effect of a non-convertible rupee means that few people bother to invest in India. Suppose you get rich and make lots of rupees. Then what? How exactly do I convert those rupees into dollars and bring my profit home. You may claim it can be done if I manage to persuad (ie bribe) the right people. Maybe even legally if I can manage to fill in 500 different pieces of paperwork.
This is precisely my point---corruption and bureacracy are destroying the country. There are plenty of other countries I can invest in that do NOT force me to put up with the hassle India presents---and so lo and behold, few companies bother to invest in India.
4) Hindus love Muslims. Yeah, right. That's why 40 million people died at partition time. That's why the country has fought three wars with Pakistan. That's why there's a national obsession with Kashmir, even though the place is basically worthless. Let's recall how the BJP got to power in the first place, by persuading voters to burn down a mosque and build a hindu shrine in its place.
All countries have problems. The difference is how those problems are addressed. Pretty much all you read in US papers is about US problems. The point, however is that
(1) There is a framework in place in the US based on the legal and political structure for the resolution of these problems. The process is slow, but as a consquence it tends not to result in disasters.
(2) There is widespread acknowledgement of problems.
WRT India, the second point is non-existent. There are too many people like you who refuse to admit that problems exist, or want to blame them all on someone else.
As for the first point, part of the political solution is there (democracy) but large parts of the legal framework are not, being either corrupt or amazingly inefficient.
Just to clarify one point, if I may: taking pride in your heritage is very, very different from xenophobia, imperialism, and general meanness. It means that your cultural roots are valuable to you, and that you respect them, and that you respect their place within a whole world of cultures.
Unfortunately, "taking pride in x heritage" is also one of those propagandist jsutifications that has been overused to the point of cliche.
I take pride in my heritage, but I'm not about to say it's any more important than anyone else's. It just means something to me because it's a part of my history. I don't even expect you to care, nor am I offended if you don't. Just don't try to forcibly purge it from me.
I just came back from the Philippines. In the local shops & market, full of run down shops, people selling pirated Playstation games and the like, there were FOUR Internet Cafes, charging 60pesos an hour (about $1.50 US). For a 3rd world (or 2 1/2 world... Poor but not starving) country, it was amazing. The Internet was everywhere. No matter where we travelled in the country, we could get access back to head office. Having said that, the price still makes it a tool for the middle and upper classes.
Yeah, but it'd be a lie. He can probably get that from his fellow homeless or the SA far more easily. Looking for any kind of specialised, less-popular info on the 'net is a very frustrating excercise.
I really hate to say this, but you are correct. The fine art of trolling is not what it used to be ( in spite of the continuing effort by some very fine and original up-comming trolls who have graced the pages of /. in recent months ).
What can I say? Perhaps we need to start an Open Source Troll project that provides online documentation and basic how-to's on the subject. People need to understand that trolling is an art form that requires not only humour and imagination but at least a thin veneer of credibility as well ( like they say in the classics, "the safest place to hide a lie is between two truths " ).
if you're serious, you're a moron.
Hmmm. A rather paranoid possibility has occured to me. About nine months ago, there was a major influx of Windoze zelots around here. The concensus of opinion at the time was that his Billness was deliberatly encouraging employees to drop in during their lunch breaks to make as much trouble as possible.
Perhaps Bill has changed track and is now offering free Windowze boxes to the local insane asylum on the proviso that the inmates drop in for regular psychotic raves?
I'll admit, it's far fetched, but Bill has done wilder things than that in the past.
This service anouncement was brought to you by "Evil Genius's for a better Tomorrow", a non-prophet organisation dedicated to serving the global community.
well in Karachi we seem to get a new ISP every month. A few have had a couple go bust, but most are overloaded (256 k link, 400 users is typical). cultural impact ? well porn is now very easily available on the net, not much otherwise. economic ? there are people employed in this industry - what else do you want ?
Depends on how things happen over the next century or so.
Much of the current anxiety over "cultural dominance" is simply a by-product of the current situation with about 50% of the online population being American.
If the current trends continue with more and more people from other countries connecting in, the proportion of the online community made up of Americans will drop to about 25% by 2005 and from there it will continue to decline until it achieves the same proportion of the world population some time around about 2020.
So an analogy to the north American indians really isn't appropriate. They were enclosed by a single dominante culture ( the European settlers ). In the case of the Internet, over the next twenty or so years, we are going to see all of the worlds cultures mixing it up and slugging it out together.
In the long run, I think that it will mean the end of all of these individual cultures and the begining of a new global culture that takes a little bit from all of them.
So yeah, in one sense it is a little bit sad that all of these different cultures will disapear but I think that what will grow out of them will be better than any of the existing cultures that we know.
ROTFLMAO!!!!!!!!!!
Best post I've read in weeks.
Actually I think I have to agree with you. One thing though. I can extend your argument to deny the concept of property rights of any form. Therefore, kindly tell you where you live so that I can collect the objects which you are immorally keeping from me :)
I think that the difference between slavery (which is property rights over people) and copyrights (which is property rights over ideas) or home ownership (which is property rights over... well.. property:) is the thing owned . I can't own you because you have the same rights as me. I *can* own a thought or a house because they don't have any rights whatsoever.
One last point. Copyrights are intended to be narrowly defined. If you can come up with a *similar* idea as mine (but one that is identifyibly different), than you can copyright your idea. That's why musicians can "cover" each other's works. That's why Compaq was able to reverse engineer the IBM BIOS. That's why Netscape and Internet Explorer can both do nearly the same work, using the same Mozilla core, but each make profit (well... sort of).
That really isnt true, youd be suprised how many back country towns in Georgia and Alabama have Cable access. And they are the ones that get the FAST connections because there isnt a whole city bogging them down. And really, everyone I know has alot of interaction with the internet. I dont think it would be much different anywhere else. (I live in a hillbilly town in Georgia).
hi i have lived in pakistan for 22 years , till sep 1999.. and as far as i can remember all the major cities have multiple isps
in third world countries like pakistan and india... internet is not widely accessible not due to cultural reasons but because of economical reasons... a major portion of people in these countries don't have access to schools, highways, jobs.... internet access is least of their concerns...
IP and copyright are not terrible things. There are only certain cases where they are in that is in the majority of business process patents and a certain number of software patents. I get the idea that you are against all intellectual property and if true that is just stupid. Effort and products should be protected reasonably. Just because the system breaks down in many cases doesn't mean that we have a reason to just can the entire system. I have three software patents myself, although I would only consider them for use in defence because I realize that while they are novel, ideas do not come out of nowhere and others will come to similar ideas given time (which brings us to unreasonable patent extensions..)
"They are not all poor, uneducated, starving and homeless."
I am posting this from Africa (Johannesburg, South Africa), and would like to give my perspective. The "internet" is often used quite differently in a developing country from how slashdotters might imagine it being used in a developed country.
In South Africa we have sufficient telecoms infrastructure, income levels and skilled people for the internet to be used like in any developed country. We have e-commerce startups listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange, on-line stores, internet banking, on-line newspapers, local search engines, internet stock trading, portal web sites and even indigenous porn sites. I think about a million people have access to the internet at home, at work, at school or via Internet cafes. This "1st world" pocket within the country has some limitations like paying for local phone calls, but generally any slashdotter would feel at home.
The "3rd world" application of the internet is even more exciting though, both here in South Africa and in our northern (poorer) neighbours. I believe you will soon see innovative application of "convergence" technologies coming out of our region. For example the convergence of cellular 'phones, smart cards and the internet.
SA has 3 million GSM cellular telephone users, with many more across the rest of Africa. The first WAP based services are already available. Many cell 'phone users are actually poorer people who don't have access to conventional 'phones or computers - the concept of a cell 'phone as a rich person's luxury toy is a myth in Africa. Short Message Services on cell phones are already popular.
Most poorer people use pre-paid smart cards in their cell 'phones. Pre-paid smart cards are also already used for domestic electricity and water payments (no billing systems or payment problems). Public transport mini-buses have begun to be equipped with smart card readers for cashless payment. Public 'phones are mostly card 'phones.
Almost all people in regular employment are paid via electronic transfers into their bank accounts (pay-roll robberies were the motivation). Electronic payments are more popular than cheques and ATM cards are popular.
Soon every Post Office in SA will have so called information kiosks where people will be able to access e-mail and browse the Internet. A local chain of petrol filling stations has announced that it will be placing ATM style kiosks in every forecourt convenience store to provide e-commerce services to their customers. All major centres have Internet Cafes.
In countries like Kenya and Zimbabwe, e-mail services are very popular, as they are cheaper and more reliable than snail mail or faxes.
Visit http://www.africanlakes.com/ to see an innovative provider of e-mail services in East Africa. African Lakes is a company that started out providing steam boat transport on the African Great Lakes in 1877, and now provides Internet services in East Africa - mainly through information kiosks. It is listed on the London Stock Exchange.
I believe it won't be long before poor people will adopt smart card electronic purses that may also be an email account, e-commerce purchase card, cell phone card, public phone card and possibly an identity card. (Less than 10% of SA's population has access to a credit card - even less in the rest of Africa - another payment method is necessary.)Internet services will be accessed from public kiosks.
So, no, the internet will not be used in the same manner that people in developing countries use it. Porn sites are unlikely to be popular when you are paying for access and you are standing at a public internet terminal in a post office(at least I hope so!). Every home does not have a cable modem, reliable electricity and a computer. But, yes, many people already access and use the internet everyday - and in the future millions more will too.
They are not all poor, uneducated, starving and homeless."
I am posting this from Africa (Johannesburg, South Africa), and would like to give my perspective. The "internet" is often used quite differently in a developing country from how slashdotters might imagine it being used in a developed country.
In South Africa we have sufficient telecoms infrastructure, income levels and skilled people for the internet to be used like in any developed country. We have e-commerce startups listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange, on-line stores, internet banking, on-line newspapers, local search engines, internet stock trading, portal web sites and even indigenous porn sites. I think about a million people have access to the internet at home, at work, at school or via Internet cafes. This "1st world" pocket within the country has some limitations like paying for local phone calls, but generally any slashdotter would feel at home.
The "3rd world" application of the internet is even more exciting though, both here in South Africa and in our northern (poorer) neighbours. I believe you will soon see innovative application of "convergence" technologies coming out of our region. For example the convergence of cellular 'phones, smart cards and the internet.
SA has 3 million GSM cellular telephone users, with many more across the rest of Africa. The first WAP based services are already available. Many cell 'phone users are actually poorer people who don't have access to conventional 'phones or computers - the concept of a cell 'phone as a rich person's luxury toy is a myth in Africa. Short Message Services on cell phones are already popular.
Most poorer people use pre-paid smart cards in their cell 'phones. Pre-paid smart cards are also already used for domestic electricity and water payments (no billing systems or payment problems). Public transport mini-buses have begun to be equipped with smart card readers for cashless payment. Public 'phones are mostly card 'phones.
Almost all people in regular employment are paid via electronic transfers into their bank accounts (pay-roll robberies were the motivation). Electronic payments are more popular than cheques and ATM cards are popular.
Soon every Post Office in SA will have so called information kiosks where people will be able to access e-mail and browse the Internet. A local chain of petrol filling stations has announced that it will be placing ATM style kiosks in every forecourt convenience store to provide e-commerce services to their customers. All major centres have Internet Cafes.
In countries like Kenya and Zimbabwe, e-mail services are very popular, as they are cheaper and more reliable than snail mail or faxes.
Visit http://www.africanlakes.com/ to see an innovative provider of e-mail services in East Africa. African Lakes is a company that started out providing steam boat transport on the African Great Lakes in 1877, and now provides Internet services in East Africa - mainly through information kiosks. It is listed on the London Stock Exchange.
I believe it won't be long before poor people will adopt smart card electronic purses that may also be an email account, e-commerce purchase card, cell phone card, public phone card and possibly an identity card. (Less than 10% of SA's population has access to a credit card - even less in the rest of Africa - another payment method is necessary.)Internet services will be accessed from public kiosks.
So, no, the internet will not be used in the same manner that people in developing countries use it. Porn sites are unlikely to be popular when you are paying for access and you are standing at a public internet terminal in a post office(at least I hope so!). Every home does not have a cable modem, reliable electricity and a computer. But, yes, many people already access and use the internet everyday - and in the future millions more will too.
i find this very amusing. try loking in yur own backyard. When you say, America is used to the Net, which America are you thinking of? the Net is great for the percentage which have it. But look at wider America and you'll see there is _no_ access
his is the biggest collection of fucking imbahceils...
Sure is.
I come from Turkey, which is not necessarily considered third world but inflation has in the past been so high that food at mcdonalds costs billions. My story is that a couple of years ago I got internet access and used that capability to learn english better and become a more proficient programmer. My university was terrible and I did not learn much but that is where the internet did not fail me. I am now in virginia on h1b and making a good salary and that would not have been possible for me without the internet.
Cheap is relative. I'm certainly not an expert on the average household income in third world countries, but isn't it normal for people there to be bringing home about $20 a month? You say it's $20 US a month for internet there. I'm not contradicting you, but that could very well be saying that it's equivalent to $2,500/month in the United States. This could be an exageration (I'm pulling these figures out of thin air), but not everywhere is as rich as the United States. In fact, very few places are. Certainly I'm used to having my T1 connection and a new computer every few years. I also eat 3 meals a day (they even feature protein!) and own shoes. It is not a statistical anomally that I survived from birth to 20 something years. This isn't true for billions of people. Having the ability to read Slashdot puts us in the minority of people.
Hi fellow /.ers;
.as, .cx or .to is >handled and sold comercially troughout the world >I think its pretty irrelevant if a inhabitant >choose his national domain or not.
/away there is the jazz police knockin at my front door... How do i gotta come? with my hand upon my head or...
Even if the main topic is third world providing, i'd like to talk about another side of the solution (what the hell the problem could be) :
Once you can rely on the fact that someone in a developping country got an internet access, the service can be designed and hosted almost everywhere.
For example, my friends Ploc and NoNo wrote a communication/collaboration website (called projet expression ; alpha test version on projet.expression.free.fr (in french)). The GNU release is comming soon.
The site is aimed to (aimed on?) people in africa or elsewhere ; it is intended to be useful for those guy more respectable than me; the ones who fight oppression politically or by any other ways.
Sure, you can argue that only the most powerful citizen of a nation can afford an internet (a fortiori; http) connection. It is sure a problem, but we can hope that embassy employees, for example, are connected.
I've done a little debugging and security testin on the website ; feel free to help if you want to.
...
unsorted quotes :
>Indian workers are less productive than U.S. workers
LOL ! Kindda clichesque i think ; remember H J Simpson ?
I tought about going stufyin in india ; in the IT field they are quite good. I coulnd't afford the trip, but the other raison why i'm still in the 5-weeks-a-year-holidays country (namely France) is the fact that Indian are incredibly unstoppable worker, which i'm not.
And by the way, most of CMM certified software engeenering companies are in India.
What dya tell ? iso what ?
>The major reason these countries are poor is that their leaders (and frequently the bulk of their inhabitants) are stupid.
That's why no one can stand US ppl... did ya forget what European tought bout your young rascal's governements in the beginin of the 19 century ? If there is only one good point due to colonialism, it is that most educated people in developping countries lived for years in Paris, London, at the MIT or eleewhere.
Maybe not well intentionned. Probably far less stupid tahn you and me.
(even if 'there is a difference between ignorance and stupidity' archie ziff)
>- less money on weapons and more money on education?
Let's stop talkin about india... Someone remembers what happened in Nicaragua, wheze the republcodemocrats had (and probably still have) to figth a guerrilla armed payed leaded by the CIA? Never heard about contra ? Why did the cia launch the crack besides dividing minorities ? to pay 'military experts' to train indian to fight there governement (a bit left winged, but the mine is like that and there is no civil war here).
I saw an attempt to democratize a dictature fail just in order to make you settle in orbit.
You dont remember that in 1983, the recall of the 73 crisis was still here, and that software was a funny word, and no one tought IT genius seriously, and the Hacker Community was growin in the dark.
If there werent your tragic joker president to call for money for his star war, to tell you that communism was growing from santiago to mexico, would we send spacecraft to Europa now ?
>When a domain name like
mmm... the www.nic.cx case is special... Free for residents and not for stranger...i'd like Frenhc gtv to do so...
>Then you have a country like France which is very
industrialized but hasnt had a huge rush of people
going out and 'discovering the joys of the weeb'.
> Why?
> Phone prices.
Not wrong. It has to be told again and again...Drawabck of a monopoly...we pay 8 cent/mn for a local call...but ;
advantage of a monopoly : we got an network terminal in almost every house, it's calle minitel, we can watch what's in kino or buy a train ticket from home since 84 (widespread since 90)... The service is as expensive as a porn phone number, but the terminal is for free.
So bad, they did not make it evolved, cause it took too long to take off... so its text mode an 9600...
>I figure the best thing to do would be for Coke >to buy the middle east, and Pepsi to buy Africa.. >We'll make a rule that says neither company is >allowed to go to war
> with the other.
in fact Coca Cola has fracnhisee in africa... And ask brazilian about Fiat replacing the governement in its private worker cities...
Thats why most american think that India is less developed then brazil...
>by the french government forbidding french civil >servat from using the 'american' terms e-mail and >start-up. The cited violation of the very strict >French language purity
> laws. Thank god for the 1st >amendment....
mmm...well sure its kindda stupid; someone inveted the word 'mel' to replace 'mail' for the incredible reason that it sounds the same in french...
I laught...
know i use it (grin).
>BTW EMAIL start-up
mmm...i imported some prohibited material...
> STUPID french laws...or is it stupid >french, having only been to Paris once I feel >that I am lacking in the proper skills to make >the choice...
mmm nice to think so, i went once and it was enuff
come to Lyon and you wont never leave !
>Iran tried to do the same thing in the 60's and >70's by sending many of it's brightest to the >west to increase their skills/education.
some of those who learned to use a F14...
> Problem >was that many of them got
used to a western life style and decided to stay in the west. Others that returned >found that they couldn't continue their work on >physics (for example) since the country was lacking in advanced equipment.
And that when the integrist took the power (don,t forget; got is an excuse; the power is the aim) the good fellow in the free world dint give a fsck...
> Food, Security, shelter, surviving yet another day.
mmm... the website i was talkin above is intended to help ppl figthin for their right...rigth for food and so on...Inet can help.
>You don't need a full-blown PC and a telephone line to have Internet access.
i got to say...
Linux on amiga !
who dont have no tv nowaday?
>Muslim law forbids charging of interest. That's a >fairly big hurdle to capitalism.
and the christian law dont allow you to borrow money w/ interest. (not silly)
U R livin in sin !
>There is now even a Cyber Cafe in El Salvador.
In alger (el Djezair) too... Very muslim btw...
>I guess the biggest problem is the infrastructure though.
most of 3rd world coutries directly set up cell phone rigth now.
>"The romance of Silicon Valley was about money - excuse me, about changing the world, one million dollars at a time."
> -- Jean-Louis Gassée
mmm... nice sig ! lol !
> Abraham Maslow,
twas this guy in palo alto, which worked with the 'global village' guy?
> Pakistan's been reading the Superpower HOWTO backwards. Feed At Least Half Your People comes before Have Nuclear Weapons
Tell that to the legions of homeless underneath the poverty treshold in the US (or eleewhere)...
bbsc ;
nicoSPAMchartoire@bigNfOoot.com
LOL, do you have ANY concept of what made these people third world countries in the first place?! If they had the kind of motivation and desire to live that you do, they wouldn't have been/be starving in the streets. They wouldn't have missed the industrial revolution completely. The people wouldn't have went centuries upon centuries without ever discovering simple things like irrigation! Esperandi countries like India didn't 'miss' the industrial revolution ... all their resources were used to 'start' the revolution by colonial rulers such as the m-f-ing british.
2. There is a big difference in being in a village or a city in a developing country. The infrastructure in villages is very fragile. I frequently have problems calling home because a tree has fallen over the telephone poles somewhere or the electricity is out due to rains and fallen lines etc. Infrastructure in cities is far more reliable and functional. That is a huge reason for migration to big cities in countries like India.
3. Email and the web will initially exacerbate the brainwashing that the education systems of various countries subject their people to (just look at what happened during the Kargil war b/w India and Pakistan -- every two bit 'educated' nationalist from these countries was up in arms). However, over the long run, it seems to me, people will learn reasonable lessons and be more openminded purely out of concern for their own welfare, especially economic concerns.
4. Governments are going to have a much harder time dealing with the erosion of their powers by the technology connecting people, bypassing the oldtime radio and TV misinformation, deception and general information control. With email people can bypass the rulers and their henchmen much easier, certainly more easily than with a pirate radio station or posting flyers and posters with dissenting stuff. With mass participation in the communication thru the new media and exposure to the world outside their own countries (ESPECIALLY the world of ideas and practices in other countries) it is gonna be much harder for governments to get away with what they are used to.
5. Check out http://www.epatra.com -- you can exchange email in many languages' own scripts using an ordinary english keyboard. It is far easier (and common) for people to learn the roman alphabet than learning english language. Every shop in India, Pakistan, Nepal, Sri Lanka has signboards in English "New Delhi Silk Store" etc.
My parents did not have a phone years ago. Life has become much easier for everyone in the village with a few phone lines coming in. It does create class problems, but things seem to be headed towards more people getting access to phones with time.
People in countries like Eithopia are apathetic about progress because they are more worried about when and where they are going to eat, where they are going to live, and which band of armed men are going to show up the next day. It's Maslow's hierarchy of needs perfectly illustrated. How much of that poisonous aid actually gets to the people who need it? Go out and live in the middle of Nevada in a shack for a few months and see how worried you are about your internet connection.
This is wrong.
The essential problem in poor countries is not famine, and it's not laziness. It is lack of rule of law.
It makes no sense to work harder than to obtain the bare essentials if anything extra that you earn can and will be stolen away from you, either by local thugs or by the government.
The way for these countries to improve does not involve the internet or foreign aid or foreign investment. It involves instituting secure property right. If countries refuse to do that, well tough---you make your bed and you lie in it.
"Pakistan is VERY Muslim... and may have legal hurdles."
Yet another example of American sterotypical views. What does this have to do with legal hurdles, if anything?
Also, Pakistan is a Muslim country, but I don't see what you mean by "VERY Muslim." It is certainly not as Islamic as Iran (Iran has of recently starting deviating from being "VERY Muslim").
ao /P
My take is that Internet and similar communications technologies offer a lifeline to developing countries. Why? Technology is no substitute for political consciousness - but the brilliance of the net is it's ability to build that consciousness through interaction and communication that breaks down entrenched geographic, social and other barriers.
Opportunity : to leap-frog years of expensive development and install lowest cost equipment available to the vast majority of the population. Think - satellite TV access in India - lowest costs in the world, available to great majority of population.
Dangers : Another Channel to sell western products to developing worlds - another channel to enrol cheap labour while avoiding responsibilty.
Dominance of English. The dominance of english is definately slowing the uptake of the net in developing countries, and restricting it to the wealthy. Free Software (localisations of Linux) is fighting that (See Bytes for all (link below)
There are some very interesting organisations that readers may be interested in.
PanAsiaA group that has assisted in the development of the first ISPs in some 6 asian developing countries - they mainly work with civil society and people's organisations. They are now developing e-commerce applications.
Bytes For ALlSpeaks for itself. Links to training courses for poor in developed countries to jump start Internet - with a radical mindset.
Free software and development(Paper calling for involvement from Free Software movement in development issues - previously posted on /.)
Other ICT in Development LinksPersonal page of links and analysis.
James Howison http://jhowison.tripod.com
Do you know ANYTHING about this subject?
Muslim law forbids charging of interest. That's a fairly big hurdle to capitalism.
There was a big song-and-dance back in the early 70's (same time as the first OPEC price hikes) about how an alternative Muslim economic model would arise based on friendly people helping each other without the need for interest.
Well, 25 years later, most of the oil wealth is squandered and I see precious little evidence of the success of this alternative Muslim economic model.
Man, it's halfway between lunch and supper and you have to be out here mentioning DONUTS? That ain't jam on my keyboard, it's drool.
by the french government forbidding french civil servat from using the 'american' terms e-mail and start-up. The cited violation of the very strict French language purity laws. Thank god for the 1st amendment.... BTW EMAIL EMAIL EMAIL EMAIL EMAIL EMAIL EMAIL EMAIL start-up start-up start-up start-up start-up STUPID french laws...or is it stupid french, having only been to Paris once I feel that I am lacking in the proper skills to make the choice...
Flame on:
Americans are so fantastically parochial it blows my mind.
There is no greater example of how brainwashed Americans are by their educational system and their media then as to how they think the rest of the world operates. It always ammuses me to, while travelling about in the rest of the planet outside of western europe, japan, australia and canada about how open mouthed most Americans are. It's like they are finally getting a peek outside the matrix.
Being such the fantastically idiot savant population of naive children we are I really am starting to think that our psycho-social masters, whoever they are, will be in control for a long long time to come.
I've lived for quite a number of years in India, and I'd like to share some thoughts with people here. India is an example of a third-world country where democracy still exists with a constiution to support it. India does right now have cheap internet access (about $1 an hour, not including phone charges) available in all the major cities, however the growth of the internet in India has been unexpected by the government, and consequently, the infrastructure is suffering. Indians generally have been doing well in the field of computing, but mostly in the United States, becaues the facilities are better. Regarding free speech, and censorship, well a lot of countries have tried restricting the internet by blocking sites and things like that, but history shows that it doesn't work. For a little while in India the government ISP tried to block internet telephony, but gave up when they realized the futility of this. People often don't realize how much the internet can help even people who don't need to check their stock quotes on the internet. Internet telephony has the potential to create huge savings in the telephone industry, locally as well as internationally. The possibilities are almsot limitless. Arun a_mathew@hotmail.com
Why is this moderated to zero? This is a good point. Whats the point of a computer if your bloody starving? Have you all lost your senses? Maybe you are a bunch of nerds with a narrow focus on life. Rather give the 3rd world computers than food, you really need your heads seen to. You may get some satisfaction that you just put ethiopia on the internet, but I'd get more satisfaction from knowing they aren't starving to death!
I figure the best thing to do would be for Coke to buy the middle east, and Pepsi to buy Africa.. We'll make a rule that says neither company is allowed to go to war with the other.
Then basically, what we call "countries" now will just be divisions of the large companies.
Corporate rule no. 1: No interdepartmental warfare!
That would stop all the fighting, and they'd get refreshing drinks out of the deal too. Now if only Trojan would sponsor large parts of the world....
I hear that in many tourist spots frequented by western backpackers (notably Thailand) web cafes are springing up all over the place. However, since these places have a thriving tourist industry already, they are likely to be better off than the average anyway.
Iran is NOT as islamic as Pakistan. In fact it is alot more liberated in many aspects. The fundemental streak in some of the Muslims in Pakistan is very violent and not by any means comparable to Iran's. They don't burn christian churches and sunni mosques like they do in Pakistan from time to time.
Iranians, are fully receptive to internet. Traditions and culture and religon does not seem to be an obsticle to the average Iranian even though alot of media in US portrays it as such. For those who can afford it, mainly middle to upper classes, tuning into the internet is catching on like wild fire. The Universities are putting out alot of CS students out to a job market that is not even fully developed in Iran. Lots of opportunities to tap into this upcomming talent pool of developers. The biggest obstacle they face is the government state run monopoly of the ISP and internet links. There is a state conglamorate Telecommunication company that is run by state but really just benefits a few that stifle competition whenever they can. This has prevented the entrance of private ISP's into the market. Also there is a filtering of sites that is done by the government to limit information access to porn sites and a few dissident group sites. However all else is allowed. It is not clear what is going to happen to this state monopoly after the recent elections that ushered in the pro-reform representatives and they will be the majority in the parliment. The signs are positive though. They have already said that their first order of business is to lift a ban on Satelite dishes. This is a major step forward towards making information more accessible to iranians. Also there is a great curiosity build around open source and particularly Linux/intel. The US embargo prevents the entrance of any power servers into the country so the Web sites and ISP's are utlizing linux the most. There are even alot of university projects on linux clustering and parallel computing to make use of cheap PC's for power computing. These efforts are all led by students as private companies are mainly involved business development. Another push for embracing Information Technology has been the effort to reduce reliance on oil as the main resource for the country. Lots of exciting things are happening in iran.
and soon to follow will be the rest of australia....
Your argument assumes that developing countries have a different relationship between the media and government than that of America. I would argue that America's government is simply more subtle when influencing the popular opinion through mass media. For examples of the Government and Media whoring for each other, you can remember the recent debacle where the gov paid money for anti-drug messages to be placed into shows. It has also been shown that Clinton guided the media in their portrayal of the various conflicts in Bosnia. These were definately not the first, nor likely the last time that the government decides what you need to know. Developing countries might do better than we have, considering in many of them that are allowed a chance to vote, the voter turnouts are much higher than here.
I remember asking a famous VP a similar question about 5 years ago with regards to Cell Phones. His response was that research and markets suggested that 80 percent of the people on earth will never make any kind of phone call in their life! 80% Think about that!!!
Not for personal reasons, since I don't know anyone in India, but because it strikes me as being so OBVIOUSLY corrupt.
The only reason India blocks Dialpad is because they want to charge outrageous rates for calls to the US. In other words, they want to support their moribund telecom industry by extorting money from the population.
A truly intelligent gov't would realize that Dialpad (and places like it) is a great way to keep your populace informed and happy, as well as encouraging overseas programmers -- the Indian programmers I know all send money back to their family in India, which has got to amount to a huge sum of incoming "free" money.
But no, instead, the Indian gov't blocks Dialpad. Freakin morons . . .
Yeah, their fingers are too fat and they drip the jam from their donuts on the keyboards.
You know I have quite slender fingers and I live in the US oh god that just blew your theory out of the water damn what a shame.
You know not everyone who lives in the US is like Homer Simpson.
Then islam will spread onto the internet and our men can do battle with the unrighteous USA. The Islamic internet is coming.
Sure it will and the who world will run linux get real my little arab.
The "cultural friction" you refer to can be easily overcome via the liberal application of hot grits to one's privates. thank you
www.pornindia.com
My point is that *most* people are not on the net and don't have an email address outside the tech hub areas. Sure AOL has dial up points just about everywhere. Want DSL or cablemodem speed access and don't live in a tech zone? Forget it. The net is still a toy or "entertainment" or a diversion for the kids.
I was vacationing in Belize, and what seemed to happen was that people who bought the internet would sell time on the internet to others, often out of restaurants and houses. That said, the price of the connection made it practically impossible to use the connection for any more than an hour or two a week, and the connection speed was pretty poor.
French people are just like that. I live near the province of Québec (a very French place) in Canada, and they have a very controversial law in Québec that dictates that the English writing on outdoor signs must be no more than half the size and height of French lettering. If your outdoor sign has English lettering that's too big, you get whipped with a nasty fine. Sure, this law violates the basic human right to freedom of expression, but they don't care.
In October 1999, a man was in a post office in a Québec and he asked for stamps in English. The guy behind him in line scolded him, "Speak French; you're in Québec." The first guy (ordering stamps) ignored him, and the man behind him (who told him t ospeak French) punched him in the face -- hard. The assailant got off with just a $500 fine, despite the fact that he'd had trouble with the law before.
I honestly don't understand French people. They are incredibly stuck-up about this stupid language issue. Other cultures, like the Germans, the Spanish, the Italians, etc. aren't, and they're not getting assimilated or having their language diluted. Good grief. There are plently of French-derived words in English, and we don't care.
Just lost my Karma here. Don't ever post in the wrong window. This was supposed to be attached to another article.
The average access to technology outside the US is usually even more restricted than it is here. Computers tend to cost more and online access is more difficult to attain. This can take many forms the least of which is per minute fees for even simple local calls. Tends to interfere with being online for any ammount of time when you are getting billed for anything you do. Hmm, I'm thinking NOT.. at least not in Canada. Here ADSL is a viable option: $40/mth with 2.5 mbps for access speeds, available in pretty much any major community (at least where I am), from what I've heard, the States are still trying to push ISDN! Honestly, the phone networks in Canada kick the shit out of what is down in the states. Computers cost the same amount, are just as available and just as highly used. I agree that European countries may have it a little harder, but don't forget your Neighbours in the north.. Ok, Ok, maybe I'm biased, I do work for a phone company after all :)
The problem won't be the internet or the technology _per_se_. Rather, it will be the content. Where that content offends someone the media and the technology may well be condemned with the message.
We may perceive that a country like Pakistan may have a problem with the Internet, but I think we'll find that the real problem is that the Internet allows access to content that is considered at least controversial, and probably completely unacceptable ("anti-muslim" in the case of Pakistan, as one example). The medium (Internet) may be perceived as the same thing as the message, or thought of as only bringing that kind of message, and therefore bad, bad, bad.
It will be the old story of shooting the messenger, all over again.
To those that don't know, not everyone in third world countries is poor, starving and/or illiterate. I lived in Zimbabwe for 12 years. I actually got an email address in 1995, and proper internet access in 1996, before it became popular, and probably before most current US users. We also had linux! Yeah, we got on a linux list and some guy in Germany sent us a really ancient version of Slackware. All the docs were in German, but we did get it running, thanks in large part to online English docs. After highschool, I worked for a web design company. Yes, they have those too. Later on, for one of the three local ISPs, where I drove around the city configuring TCP/IP and modems for new subscribers, many of whom were aid organizations, people in government positions, and foreigners. The potential that the internet has was not lost on them, especially when they realized that they weren't poor, starving, or illiterate like the Americans always knew they were. Monthly fees were around US$50 as I recall. Out of reach of most of the population, but not all of them. I never encountered cultural friction except when they called our helpdesk when we were down. And the Quake community is sadly lacking, which I know irritated me. Now in California at university I get 26.4kbps while my father in Zimbabwe gets 50kbps. I made sure PacBell were made aware of this fact. *sigh* Many people are under the impression that someone is advocating donations of money/equipment for the purposes of spreading internet access in Africa/Asia. No. This isn't happening. The ISPs involved are businesses, like any other. They are trying to turn a profit. Since giving internet access to the starving and illiterate is not likely to make much money, no-one attempts this. You can put your fears to rest.
Your so clueless it is not even funny.
Number one thing you got wrong about the nature of this arguement: a slave is a human being, it can be trained do anything, be anything, that I can do, or don't want to do. A slave is not just one thing, its the ultimate flexible tool. *That* is what makes it valuable. Plus it is sentinent, can make judgement calls, and expands my abilities and horizons so much more that I can without it. Thats why I need it.
IP is a granted right that you own to ONE particular idea, concept, or work, that on its own is vastly limited. It does ABSOLUTELY NOTHING for me except possbily earn me money.
person vs. things, its not that complicated
get a life!! it's high time you guys learnt to assume responsibilities for your own goof-ups, rather than blame India for everything ..
At which point he'll ask if he can use the internet to find cheaper liquor and drugs. If the answer is no, he'll lose interest.
Fortunately, there's eBay...
Seriously! This is the only way you can reconcile all the contradiction between them and even the ones within individual religions. Science is the only path to Truth. All religion is wrong. Now no doubt, some weiner is going to jump up and claim that Science is a religion too, but there is a simple and very fundamental difference between science and any religion. Science continually questions its own assertions, debunks the wrong ones, and what's left gains strength. No religion is willing to do this. Religion does not ever question itself. Everything is True by Decree because religion cannot survive self examination intact. Science only gets stronger as a result of self-questioning. Religion would crumble under its own microscope. Now sure, science has its rigid streak of stupidity; some ideas die hard in science, mostly because a generation of scientists brought up with certain theories (e.g., newtonian physics) find it hard to throw them away when something new comes along (relativity), even when it fits the observations better. But they grow old and die and the new gen accepts the new system, and science evolves. Science is a continual crucible. In it we burn away falsehoods until we're left with the pure truth. Religion would go up in that first puff of smoke if it ever questioned itw own principles. Will science ever reach ultimate truth? No. There will always be a new unknown to learn. But science is the only true path toward wisdom. It matters not they we'll ever get there. It's the journey that's important.
It was short term indentrued servitude,
that was white and black, never inherited,
and gave people an opportunity to own
property and advance themselves,
This statement alone shows you know jack shit about slavery in the US and Carribean.
I did notice that the ping times were up near 900ms for their web server
Hell, I've seen 2200ms ping times for an american school web server in... Paris!
I expect this to be out soon but I might as well tell you. Check out the link to the article in the norwegian newspaper Nettavisen.
It seems Playstation 2 will be on sale in Norway within a few days at Smartshopper for 750$. They found a totally legal way of avoiding Japanese export regulations.
This wouldn't be the first time someone preannounced vaporware to keep thier stock price
from falling throught the floor.
-DF.
"James Burke commented in an interview some years ago that he hoped the Internet would have the effect of forcing Americans to see how different the rest of the world is."
Here we are looking at the world from the soley American perspective. How about, the Internet forces the world to see how different America is from what the popular views 'different cultures' get from hollywood and the american media.
I am from Pakistan too. I got on the Internet in early 1995 with the first ISP. Before this ISP there were a few BBS's (Bulletin Board Systems) and email services, all charging a small fee for sending and recieving email all over the world. Moreover, some of the BBS's were connected to other international BBS's and they shared their newsgroups.
Pakistanis have been quick in adopting the internet, there regular users as well as addicts of IRC, email, and online porn. Every school child has heard of the Internet, and possibly been on it, or seen some using it at a friend's house.
In the better families (read: richer), all families who are even slightly tech savvy have a computer, and if they don't use it their childern do. Email is used regularly (and sometimes services like net2phone and dialpad) to keep in touch with relavitves abroad.
ISPs are popping up all over the place, with extremely cheap unlimitied access accounts at Rs.1000-2000 per month ($20-40), as well as reasonable hourly access rates. Unfortunately these rates are still quite expensive for the average pakistani - though I know of many people (going to local universities) who form groups to share an internet account, which makes it very feasible. It is extremely hard for a new ISP to be set up in Pakistan, with a lot of red tape. Also, with the huge taxes on ISPs, it costs a lot more to set than up one in America. But ISP startups are still thriving in Pakistan.
Pakistanis have adopted the internet. The problem lies in getting the illitrate masses to be able to use it. Maybe if they could, the Government policy would not have been so easy going as now.
ao
Wow, you SV reporters just look around and think you're seeing the whole world, maybe you even fly to NYC, and Tokyo. Why not take a stop in Casper? or Billings? or Twin Falls? or Topeka? or Rawlings? or Lubbock? or Elko? or Flagstaff? or Sante Fe? or Grand Forks? Y'all heard of any of these places? Or is that just "fly over country" to ya? No sir, most of America is not wired or accustomed to the net. It's still brand spanking new tech.
In Hungary we have many Pakistani and african students majoring in CS, and they take Internet for granted just like you do. It is a pretty typical mistake, to think that people in less developed countries are on a lower stage of development. The journeys to such countries are not time-travels to your or our past! They have their own florishing hackerdom (just check out the author lists of free software packages or kernel patches), ISP's (which are not hard to estabilish at all) and restrictions. US computing policies are among the most restrictive ones in the world anyway, the other two black sheeps are France and Iran. In Eastern Europe (where I am from) we actually have much more freedoms on the net and most of our political battles are fought not to let our goverments mindlessly ape America or the West in general and take our freedoms away (I have to admit that we are usually loosing these battles). I think that the free software movement has to focus on local problems (think and act locally!) since grasping other society's problems without experience of living there is impossible. Oh, and to own a computer is not a luxury in the vast majority of countries, because unlike cars after the purchase you don't have to invest too much to them (you *can* of course, but still, you don't have to), and can actually MAKE money with your computer, so it actually pays off to own a computer in less developed countries.
I volunteered for a university on the Atlantic coast of Nicaragua just over two years ago. The university was extremely poor, but it did have internet access. The major problems were lightning kept taking out computer equipment - either through the power lines or the phone lines (the UPS only lasted two months and it was unplugged during the storms) and L/D cost - there wasn't a local ISP; the closest was in Managua. Both the students and staff were very excited about having access to the internet. The Spanish teacher was very happy to have access to Spanish poems he could print out and use in class (the university couldn't afford to provide books), and the students really wanted to get more up-to-date information on what they were studying (the textbooks were very old). Unfortunately the university didn't have the resources to allow students to surf. Language was also a problem - only 1/2 the students spoke Creole English and could just understand the english web pages. The other 1/2 spoke only Spanish and had difficulty finding information.
On a serious note,I've personally been involved in USAID's Leland Initiative and have seen the implications of erecting ISP's in developing countries. Most of these projects are ill fated just like any other 'development' project(s) spearheaded by non-governmental organizations; whether they are USAID, UNDP, WTO or the IMF. If anything, I saw the projects to be a way of decreasing communication costs for these NGOs because certain Security Counsel members don't want to spend any more money so people can find 'new and improved' methods of killing eachother. I did however see the benefit of K12 education in Universities where the only teachers brave enough to venture into poor/war torn countries happen to be 'missionairies' and the like. I'm all for schooling, but whats really being learned in these classes? Excuse my leftism, but fibre lines, WaveLAN and *NIX boxes cannot substitute agriculture, medicine and real education. Conquest comes in all shapes, sizes and categories so for a moment, substitute the global Internet economy for the global arms industry, P.W. Botha for Bill Gates and a landmine for a mouse click. Efficiency has its own ramifications I suppose, but its hard to be an efficient runner if someone clicked your left femur to vapor. Square one's a bitch to go back to and start from scratch, but Mozilla seems to have done it okay. Maybe open source could be applied to develping a country? Or would it be misconstrued as guerilla warfare?
The major reason these countries are poor is that their leaders (and frequently the bulk of their inhabitants) are stupid. (Or, to use the PC term, there is "cultural friction".)
Why is this going to change with respect to computers and the internet?
These are people who are unwilling to adopt ways of government and structuring their economy that 200 hundred years of experience have taught us work well. Now we expect them to suddenly leap out of the paleolithic and embrace high tech?
I for one am sick of this endless litany of complaints that somehow wicked westerners are conspiring to keep everyone else down. Let's see some evidence of these countries thinking with a collective IQ of above 33 before laying the blame on the west. (Eg, for the case of India, how about:
- less money on weapons and more money on education?
- less bureacracy so that business can actually operate efficiently?
- a convertible rupee?
- political parties that spend more time on governing and less time on persuading hindus to rampage against everyone else [eg Muslims or Christians].
- agressive campaigns against the corruption that affects everything from buying a railway ticket up?)
I'm just sick and tired of "culture", "cultural identity" and everything like it. I don't care about my culture, and I don't care about anybody else's. You don't see me parading down the streets yammering about my unique minority culture (I bet I'm rarer than you are), or my heritage, or my ancestors, or any of that other crap.
I don't particularly CARE what my ancestors did two hundred years ago. I don't CARE who they defeated in 1511, and "that's why we hate those bastards over the border".
It seems like ninety-five percent of the time, "culture" is used to protect corruption, abuse of power, bigotry, and general meanness.
I'm tired of corrupt politicians saying "our culture won't accept (insert concept here)". I'm particularly peeved that people ACCEPT those arguments, and allow themselves to be oppressed because "it's our culture".
Cultural identity is just an excuse to feel superior to other people. People that "take pride in their heritage" are just trying to feel like they're worth more than everybody else.
. . . but hey, maybe being angry about this sort of thing is my cultural heritage, so don't you dare criticize me you imperialist swine!
So, I am in Israel for the year, which has no lack of technology, let me assure you. But as side trips i have been in Jordan (Petra) and Egypt (Cairo).
Petra, Jordan a little shanty town bedouin encampment they had one little house that had one dialup line connecting about 10 commputed and they called the place a cybercafe. I was almost positive the tourists were the only ones paying. It seemed to be a community area for access to computers and the internet.
In Cairo, Egypt there were a few cybercafes, in much nicer buildings. But that was not what really suprised me. One night when walking around in downtown Cairo a conman who tried to sell me drugs the night before took me through an alley and into a hole to sell me papyrus pictures. When i wasnt interested in paying his prices he offered me internet usage in a little room that looked like a dungeon. They had AOL running on it at the time. A little Egyptian boy was quickly thrown out of the room with a gutteral command.
I Hope my info was appreciated by someone, I really like telling these stories.
I live in the backwoods. Hell the US government on occassion places the Upper Peninsula of Michigan in Canada. On the cloudy shores of Lake Superior, Lake Michigan, and Lake Huron with a total population of 300,000 one of the lowest population densities in the fifty states, where the largest city is 30,000 souls I have two way cable modem access. Not bad for nowhere. Thats pretty wired.
Brian Seppanen
Minister of Information and Propaganda
Area 54 The Secret Government Disco Labs Provo
I'm involved with attempts to get development NGOs to take a stronger interest in information and communication technologies. Some web pages that might be of interest:
Danny.
I have written over 900 book reviews
... not necessarily enough, and they don't reach as many people as they should, but they exist. E.g. my sister in law in Nigeria communicates with us almost exclusively via email. Admittedly this is in the city - the situation in the countryside may be different.
I think the main problems that would be faced are the lack of telecoms infrastructure, and the sheer cost of hardware. USD/GBP 400 for a PC may be cheap in the western world, but it's a lot of money elsewhere!
BTW, if anyone is aware of a simple, cheap email device that can be used with arbitrary ISPs I'd be extremely interested to hear more
no taxation without representation!
When I moved there, in 1990, there were no ISPs and most of the country had never heard of a thing called the internet.
Just to remind you: Same goes for all the rest of the world, including the U.S. This was 1990! The "Web" as we know it hadnt even been invented, and the Internet at that time was almost exclusively available to educational users.
Id bet that even only two years ago, most of any country had never heard about a thing called the internet.
I'm finding some interesting statistics on internet use in China from the CNNIC Working Committee's (don't you love that title?) Jan, 2000 report on internet usage.
China has 8+ million internet users, 20% leased line and 80% dialup. There are a full 36 million email addresses. Usage is concentrated in cities, especially Beijing (no suprise here). Interesting though is that usage is not concentrated at the high end of the income bracket as one would expect, but disproportionately toward the low end. The highest percentage of users (36%) make only between 1001-2000 RMB monthly, and the second largest (29%) only 500-1000 RMB per month. These users are also paying 100-200 per month for internet access!
"Reactionaries must be deprived of the right to voice their opinions; only the people have that right." - Mao
Thailand, to my knowledge, has nothing resembling copyright law. Anyone know different?
If that is the case, why don't we all relocate our server space there? Why doesn't Napster operate its servers there? When US companies hear the giant sucking sound of users moving to SE Asia to avoid censorship they're bound to take notice.
And if not Thailand, there's got to be someplace that doesn't bow and scrape to the whims of US corporations. India maybe? Or Malta? Lebanon? Micronesia?
"Reactionaries must be deprived of the right to voice their opinions; only the people have that right." - Mao
This has got to be the most interesting post I've seen on this subject. Why hasn't anyone registered mp3.cn yet? (or .hk for that matter)
From experience, I can say that the HK piracy scene is flourishing. If HK pop and crappy American divas are what you're into, theres no shortage of plain 'ol websites that host them with impunity. I can't imagine what China's motivation could possibly be to ever crack down on these websites. Full games are out there as well, but you usually have to be able to read Chinese.
"Reactionaries must be deprived of the right to voice their opinions; only the people have that right." - Mao
CNNIC is China's version of the Internic. Linked to it is a list of Chinese ISP's (well, telecoms actually) one could host.
HKNIC is the Hong Kong equivalent.
Who wants to be first to try this? (BTW, I checked. mp3.cn and mp3.hk are still available.)
"Reactionaries must be deprived of the right to voice their opinions; only the people have that right." - Mao
I don't think that international pressure could change a damn thing that the US does. In all international bodies that count the US leads so exactly how is "all hell" going to break loose. You are pretty vague here I don't think that the copyright system will be taken down anytime soon especially becuase of international dissent.
It's nice to see that a wide understanding of world politics, standards and trade prevails here.
-- At rest in the information super layby.
Now native aborigines can finally hear Richard Stallman sing! I'd say this is a real win for everyone involved.
------------
a funny comment: 1 karma
an insightful comment: 1 karma
a good old-fashioned flame: priceless
this sig limit is too small to put anything good h
What information I have about this is old and unreliable, so please correct my errors:
I heard that, while the Japanese are obviously very much into technology, they are not so inclined towards the Internet because the basic tools (email and web) make it difficult to use the Japanese language.
Is this still true?
--
__
Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death.
GW Bu
You may be interested in the campaign to cancel the enormous burden that foreign debt is for 3rd world countries (e.g. Mozambique).
Jubilee 2000
--
__
Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death.
GW Bu
I heard about this organization on the radio, but
I don't know any more details beyond what is on their website.
http://www.geekcorps.org/
because the world wide web must
include the whole wide world
-- jwag
You would be amazed at the dichotomy within the Middle Eastern culture. On one hand they grasp new technologies with seeminingly little reservation. On the other they cling to traditional values and culturalisms. And contrary to popular myth even Saudi's aren't trapped in their own country by their government. Many travel and become educated abroad and return home to the country they love.
I'm not sure how applicable ths is to other countries like African Nations. I assume wealthy to middle income city dwellers share the same benefits. Poor and rural people probably don't have access to electricity much less computers and phone lines.
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
Go ahead and seach on altivista for "India programming". You get tons of links and good resources for farming out programming work.
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
Now that the US and USSR aren't dumping money into the bloody civil war in El Salvador, peace is taking hold, and telecom infrastructure is being rebuilt. There is also, for the first time, a burgeoning middle class that can afford computers and ISP service. On the streets of San Salvador, you will find advertisements for computer classes and ISPs.
My girlfriend's family (in the US) now regularly emails family in El Salvador. Yes, there still are brownouts and blackouts, especially during the rainy season, but they still manage to log in every day or so. Email is much cheaper than a long-distance phone call to Central America!
There is now even a Cyber Cafe in El Salvador.
If the US ever drops its protectionist textile tarriffs against El Salvador, maybe there will be even more people online...
The physical structure of the Internet in Ethiopia is pretty bad, but it is certainly there. Internet costed about $40 (which is a HUGE amount of buying power in Ethiopia. I'd say probably 8-10 times the buying power in the states). That is out of the range of pretty much everyone except Internationals and elites. In Ethiopia's case is probably for the best--the government sold more accounts than they can realistically handle and you could no longer create new accounts accounts when I left the country. People with accounts are still limited to work with 288.8 modems and only on an infrastructure that is unpredictable at best. Even if the phones and power works, busy signals make connections impossible until late night or early morning.
When I was there, I knew one other linux geek and five or six geeks period. They certainly exist but its difficult to foster those types of people in Ethiopia. People with that knowledge were probably educated abroad and if you learned it abroad, you probably didn't come back.
The use of the Internet is still very much limited as well. The primary use is still email but people are turing to it more for international (BBC) news and for services like Net2Phone to offset HUGE international phone rates. Still, on a limited time per month and a by-the-call phone charge (connections lose carrier immediately more than 50% of the time), it's tough.
Because Ethiopia does not censor or block sites, the impact potential could be large but the reach limits this entirely. Also, the availability of Amharic content (or even an Amharic font) is virtually non-existant.
I rember once while I was there, there was a TV news special (government of course) about the propaganda war between Eritrea and Ethiopia that was going down on the net. The propaganda was obviously geared for readers outside the coutry of course.
People definately KNOW, but the current trend is not one that actually fosters any growth or democracy.
The final thing is that before I left, I heard that the government sold rights to provide Internet access to an American or European corporation. I'm thinking that the big bandwidth giants are getting their feet in the door now and gaining monopoly status so that, from now on, all ISPs must go though them. I think this type of monopoly, which could concievably serve the majority of Internet users worldwide in 50-80 years, really defeats a lot of the fundementally ieas behind the Internet.
The Ethiopian Telecommunication Corporpation can be found at http://www.telecom.net.et.
-- Mako Hill Standing up to an evil system mako(at)debian(dot)org is exhilarating. --RMS
I don't know whether you consider India as third world, but if it is, I just wish to make a few points about how acceptable it is in India.
1. I remember hearing about internet in India as long back as in 1980's and if I'm right, India did have its own network before internet came in.
2. The present Indian Government, spearheaded the commercialization of Internet in India.
3. The only outcry I heard during the transission was from goverment bodies (telecom) who were loosing money in the privatization. However the democratic goverment made sure that Internet grew at its own pace with full support from the central goverment.
4. I hear that Cyber laws are already in effect in India, and that credit card transaction, which was no no without a physical signature is now used widely on Indian internet sites.
5. China has been politically forcing ISPs to filter sites based on content, and I hear that in India too goverment has made an effort to block some sites. Some examples of sites blocked are those providing voice over IP. However I'm yet to hear of goverment taking up action to close down sites due to cultural reasons.
6. There have been a few incidents of local goverment bodies shutting down some movies due to cultural impact, but it has little impact as the Supreme court has always managed to do justice at the end. I guess Internet too will take the same path if someone does try to do something that stupid.
In short, there are cultural implications, but there is a gradual change in perception due to a firm backing of major political parties.
rkt
The Internet is a tool, not panacea. However, you can't wait with giving people technology until their social problems are fixed - social problems are never fixed, just alleviated. </p>
Seriously, most of the 3rd world is held back by governments. Internet access would allow people there to bypass their government for a lot of things. IMAO that'll improve the relative status of hackers and entrepaneurs at the cost of the status of politicians and generals.
-- Support a free market in the field of government
Some of these posts show just how *elite* geeks can really be. Do you actually think the Internet is going to cure societies woes? (Sure, it got you stock options and a shiney new SUV but how is it gonna help the other 99.9% of the world population?)
One of the biggest problems with the third world is just how we think about it. The dominant mentality is "Wouldn't it be great if everyone lived just like us, or else they'll just be ignorant savages." Is the Internet going to be the new missionary cause that will save the third-world?
Look at it this way. Here in America, we have the Amish - a group that's sworn off technology and crass consumerism in exchange for a plain, simple lifestyle. By "modern" standards, these people should are supersticious luddites doomed to poverty. Yet, they enjoy a good standard of life and a very happy. Compare that to the business people I see everyday on the subways who look like they may kill themselves at any moment.
Maybe its time we forgot about modernizing the third world. Take all the land back from the multi-national agribusinesses, shut down the sweathouses, disarm the psycho dictators (who are often supported by Western governments) and give it all back to the people. Let them resume their lives and then carefully offer some aspects of "modern" life such as medicine and yes, even the Internet, without shoving it down their throats. I'm sure the Internet could be useful as a shared communication medium (perhaps a few terminals available in the village center) rather than a tool for economic competition.
The simple fact is we can't all live the almighty "American Dream". We're not better than everyone else, and in some ways, we're alot worse.
India and several other countries created the term "Third World of Non-aligned nations". Which were basicly those nations who wanted nothing to do with US/USSR pissing match. Pakistan was a part of India at the time. Therefore Pakistan IS a Third World Nation.
(Caveat: I haven't been out of North America, but my friends have.)
My former roommate is from Chennai in India and she told me that there are Internet kiosks and shops all over India, where one can rent a computer for small intervals of time. Seems to me that this can work in more than just India. I've used kiosks in the US when I didn't have a functional computer. For checking email or catching up with friends, they're great.
In the past few years, internet cafes have popped up all over Southeast Asia. They're *everywhere* in Thailand and Indonesia, and they're even fairly common in Cambodia. You pay a small fee by the minute to access your hotmail account (or whatever).
I really don't think that cultural barriers are much of an issue. Not in SouthEast Asia, at least. The biggest thing slowing it down is the financial and infrastructure barriers preventing people from having internet access in their homes. If you can only check your email for a fee at a cafe, it's gonna curb how much you rely on the internet.
The internet is spreading through third world countries rapidly. No big deal.
Network Startup Resource Center is a good starting point for exploring Internet prolifaration in the developing word - in many cases the information is outdated, because the local Internet grew too much to keep pace with. There was number promoting, funding and training activities to help Internet development in poor countries. Check out NSRC workshop page, Internet Society Network Technology Workshop, and other activities, UNDP's SDNP Programme, Soros Foundation Internet Project, AfNOG page and others.
Some of these activites explicitely aim at Internet accessible to general public (with programs supporting Internet in education, public Internet kiosks etc), but in general the idea is the more networking the better. Frankly, the discussion whether Internet creates new division lines between information haves and have-nots etc sounds a bit pretentious and academic if the only alternative is equality in isolation and poverty. Personally I know a lot of people from developing countries, to whom even very limited Internet presence brough enormous benefits in both knowledge and better living, and that's a good thing. Period.
Honza Jirousek
Woo hoo. Better that someone homeless give up contact with other folks on the street, social workers, resource specialists at local agencies, etc. and turn to the Internet for all their information needs. Yeah. Right.
The net doesn't hurt, but it's at best just a single part of your well-balanced information breakfast. I've worked with agencies offering services to the homeless; they see the web as a way to reach donors, not clients. Given my lack of deep expertise being homeless, I figure maybe they know best.
It would seem that some still persist in the belief that technology will solve the social ills of developing countries. This could be no further from th truth. Those of us living in the highly developed world take for granted all that we have. Yet for 1/6th of the world's population they live in abject povery.
Before we can even consider bring these countires into the digital age, we need to solve the problems of social and structual evil. The release of debt to the World Bank and IMF would be a good start, as well as stopping the exploitation and corruption that many large companies impose on the governments and then the governments on its people.
-- Huh, what?
we heer in flagstaff have them new cabel modems. i use mine to throw at sheeps.
Do we all remember the difficulties China has been having with fax machines and Internet use? Good, I thought so.
Every country has many people who have the basic needs under control and are able to afford Internet access. There also are countries using the Internet to supplement the local library. Each country has its own priorities, as you do. If your priority is to give poor people your money rather than use your computer, feel free to sell your computer and give your money away. You can work for other people as hard as you want to work.
I was in Calcutta for 2 weeks in January (was actually over the Atlantic when the clock went from 1999 to 2000), and was surpised at the number of internet shops I saw.
Several of the hotels (free restrooms!) had internet shops in some little room tucked off to the side (near the barber and the gift boutique), half of which seemed to be permanently inhabited by Mauruari types. (cultural joke) Several British chain-type bookstores had 2-4 internet terminals available for a modest hourly fee. I also saw a few street stalls that were internet access points, which were really 1-3 computers with modems. I think the fees were in 10 minute blocks.
The prices were pretty competitive with US prices -- except that everyone there was getting paid in Rupees. About 40:1, so the 800 Rs/month ($20 U.S.) average worker salary wouldn't cover anything. Phone service is terrible (government monopoly), and T1 prices, which I looked at, are heavily taxed and tariffed, to the point beyond reason. (About 8x U.S. T1 prices)
The interesting thing is that most Indian web sites I use are sited in the U.S., even though many are in Hindi or Bengali or Tamil -- so their primary audience is clearly not native English speakers.
My mom was over there the other day on a volunteer medical mission to the villages up in the Himalayas. She said it was a complete shock to be wandering about a truely desolate section of a third-world country and then run across a computer, but she sent us all e-mails.
Can't outrun the technology age any more. Is this good or bad?
The internet could be the greatest means of really bringing democracy into the third world. Most of the world population does not live in a true reponsive democracy. Many countries may have elections but an election does not make a democracy. A free press, a high degree of literacy and a government where representation is accountable to the citizens make a democracy. By this standard Serbia does not count as a democracy.
The internet provides a mode of mass communication with, to be blunt, a fairly low level of literacy required. And it is relatively easy to examine the responsiveness of your representatives with the internet.
Hey, if Bill Clinton really cared about leaving a legacy he would have promoted a Peace Corps ISP system, bringing the internet at zero cost to sub-Saharan Africa and working with their governments to eventually take over the ISP functions.
If I won 10 million dollars on iwon, this is exactly what I'd do.
So long and thanks for all the fish . . . !!!
yea, but if you had all those things you wouldn't be living in a third world country, right, right? Am I a git? Hopefully less times than more, but this one goes in the more column. I'll stand by my assetion, however, than given the basics of life (food clothing and shelter), coupled with an Internet connection, computer, and stable power to use both, could quite easily lead to a prosperous individual in a repressive environment. But if you don't have food and spend your day on the 'Net, somethins seriously fscked.
And you are correct, I don't know what it's like to be poor in a poor country, so my whole perspective is most likely useless, as is this post.
--
+&x
given the Internet, a few Perl/C++ books (written in a native language), one could go about finding abundant work from pretty much anywhere. Getting paid might be a problem, but the Net could be a big bootstrap for many of these countries. Information is a very valuable substance, and not being a commodity, helps quite a bit.
--
+&x
Replace slavery and people with information and see how your statement turns out.
First one would need to learn how to
1. speak english,
2. read.
3. type.
4. learn programming.
Without access to education, electricity, time and money having an internet connection is putting the horse before the cart.
"DNA is God's contribution to the Open Source movement"
Very good point. According to the Hunger Site FAQ it costs about $350 to buy and transport one metric ton of food. Even if you assume you can set up a computer for $1000, that's 2.8 tons of food. Besides, what good is a computer when the _vast_ majority of your population is illiterate?
The internet could further the split between classes because only those who can read will be able to use it. OR it could encourage literacy because of curiousity and desire to use it.
Taken at face value, the internet doesn't really offer that much more than books and newspapers, it's still mostly words. But books and newspapers don't blink and flash, nor do they come instantly from across the world, and the people writing them are not you.
Travelling through SouthEast Asia a few years back, I saw poverty on a third world level. Still, even the poorest houses, where families lived next to a river of sewage, where the smell was so bad it made you dizzy, there was almost always one wire going into those houses and though they didn't have plumbing or telephones or doors or in some places not even walls, not one seemed to be without a color TV. And on those TVs were American shows.
It gives me hope to imagine some kid in a school down the road from that house reading the web page of another kid somewhere else in the world. The power of the internet is not just in CNN and AOL. The real power is when some 10 year old kid posts a page about his hamster or what he likes to eat at McDonalds and then someone else reads it.
joe maller
Well, it might be unsupported opinion; hearsay is when you are repeating as fact something about which you have no knowledge but the utterance of a third party.
Anyway, the opinion expressed is certainly a bit of hyperbole, but it's not utterly without foundation. Not all countries create a body of intellectual property law and enforcement with the same zeal as the U.S.
China, for instance. Most of the third world, in fact. There was I think a Bruce Sterling novel set in a future after commercial software became a non-market, largely because China so eagerly pirated and redistributed everything, which wrecked Western economies. While this is also hyperbole (it's science fiction, after all), it's not too hard to imagine that Disney might have a hard time keeping possession of Mickey Mouse til the 23rd century (and they would, which would have a weird side effect of making David Bowie's great-great-N grandchildren into aristocrats living off the eternal deed of his works), and that copyright and patent law might undergo some huge changes as a result of globalization.
Imagine, for a moment, that China goes completely mercenary (it's really NOT hard to imagine this, based on the spam I've been getting recently) and starts running major porn sites with forbidden Alyssa Milano photos, streaming Pamela & Tommy for free at all hours, scanning Playboy, Penthouse, and Hustler right off the magazine rack and putting it online. They could run porno sites with 10,000 free samples, all with pirated content. Then, they'd enable downloads of cracked Win2K for $10. Does anyone really think the Chinese government, if it cynically decided to make money off crazy, corrupt amerikans this way, would enforce intellectual property rights? How would you stop them? It might be a lot harder than you think, for the same reasons that international borders are so porous to drugs and other contraband. Every time you plug a leak, someone else can make money by poking a new hole.
Wanna give the RIAA a brain seizure? I think contemplating "mp3.cn" might cause some of their leaders to purchase new underwear.
Expanding a vast wasteland since 1996.
I'm pretty sure most countries now have internet access - in the last couple of years I have gained access in countries as diverse as Bolivia, Peru, Laos, Cambodia, Tibet, Bhutan, Pakistan, Turkmenistan and Kyrgistan.
/. in all of the above) or to censor email I sent. For example, Emails I sent from Tibet containing some pointed comments about the Chinese occupation were delivered.
In no country did I encounted any attempt to monitor access to particular sites (you can read
An observation would be that general internet access (ie to most people, not the elites or people working for multinationals or overseas organisations) is driven to some extent by the economics of providing travellers like me access to email & news. The major tourist centres all have well developed internet cafe set ups that locals without their own PCs can use - smaller towns and villages tend not to have general public access and private use is not common.
However, this relative freedom may alter. In many less developed countries computer literacy is a minority skill - the governments of those countries (mainly older folks without computer skils) do not fully understand what power access to the internet brings. There may be backlashes when they do begin to realize. For example, in Laos the government constantly changes its mind about who should be licenced to provide access to the internt, but the computer literate mainly ignore this at the moment (if you really need access you can always dial-in through ISPs in neighboring Thailand). But, the ability of a strong central government to shut down access is a very real threat.
While you are probably right that most countries without internet access are totalitarian in nature, I would be interested to see your list - it must be pretty short (North Korea, Afghanistan (maybe), Burma, Iraq, others?). In most countries access is limited by cost & infrastructure inadequacy, not by government edict. However, reading through what you have written, I do think that you contradict your own first point: The countries that are keeping the Internet out right now are countries keeping it out not so much because of the freedom of speech or information issue (though that is a factor)... because the ability to know that the US is such a neat place is totally about access to information, not just a "factor". Also, I suspect that the elites are not so much worried about people knowing that great inventions have been made by capitalist systems, but rather that people will know that there are alternatives and that having an entrenched elite in power is not necessary the best way to run a country. Finally, access to the internet and information is not everything in shaping people's perceptions. In Pakistan they have reasonable internet access (and a sizeable middle class that can afford to access it), some freedom of the local press, access to CNN, US soap operas, etc - in fact the level of general knowledge about world affairs is much higher in Pakistan than I have often encountered in the US. But guess what? Most people still seem prepared to believe that the US is an imperialist bully intent on world domination (although perversely most individual Pakistanis would love to get to the US to work - go figure!). They are more influenced by history, religion and culture than by access to the latest headlines, and the perceptions of a whole nation will take more to change than access to the internet.
Good response - your example of the Chinese simply not having a frame of reference with which to judge things outside that country is interesting and I think is pretty true (or variations of it are true) not just there, but in Pakistan which I used as an example & very widely indeed.
A couple of points, though.
1. I am actually originally English myself (although I have not lived there for some years and have travelled a lot since then) and while I would agree that many English and Americans view their respective countries in a different fundamental way than either can fully comprehend, I think your Englishman was going a bit heavy on the reliance people place on Queen & country as a provider of last resort!
2. Pakistan has the bomb despite being a very poor country, not because it is wealthy - as a result of the political tensions between them and India, more resources have flowed to bomb making than to the economy in general and that is just not sustainable in the long term (cf. the USSR's inability to sustain an arms race for 50 years without imploding, but it did keep producing top notch weapons because it put all its efforts into it). In addition, North Korea is suspected by some to be close to nuclear capability and that country really is very very poor and economically backward.
3. Don't underestimate the economic changes that have taken place in many nominally socialist countries over the recent past. Go to China (the large cities at least) or Vietnam, both nominally communist, and you will be struck with how entrepreneurial and driven many people there are and how free they are to pursue economic goals. I would say that communism as a pure economic system is practically extinct, but what is not extinct is the hold on power held by the old nomenklatura and more importantly their desire to hold onto power by any means, which leads them to try and control flows of information.
IMHO these countries contain many people with ambition and drive, but the reason these countries will have growing pains is that nepotism, corruption, lack of relevant education, lack of a well defined legal system, lack of infrastructure, etc is endemic in them, and that change takes time, not just access to technology or information.
Galazi
we heer in flagstaff have them new cabel modems. i use mine to throw at sheeps.
Hey now!
If yer gonna immoblize dem sheeps, the cabel that comes with those cabel modems is lots stronger than that cabel that comes with those DSL modems.
You rap a sheeps legs with that DSL cabel, they kin break it and run away, and you look silly with yer pants down around your feet.
You rap a sheeps legs with that coacks cabel, them sheeps stay put!
George
Actually, the answer is yes. But he'll need an address to send the cheaper liquer and drugs to. That's a problem when you're homeless.
Later
Erik Z
Democrats or Republicans. They are both taking us to the same place and they are not afraid of us anymore.
>I swear so many people who are brought up in the west have totally ignorant views of what it means to be poor in a poor country.
You mean, someone who has been born and lived all their life in a first world country doesn't understand what it's like to live in a third world country?
Shocking! Shocking! Moderate that person up!
Later
Erik Z
Democrats or Republicans. They are both taking us to the same place and they are not afraid of us anymore.
This post encoded with ROT26. If you can read it, you've violated the DMCA. Handcuffs please, sergeant.
This is true, unfortunately. Here in South Africa, we have such a lot to go in terms of barriers before we can ever reach the level of the western world - there is just too many priorities to which the money must go, and (alas) also so many corrupt pockets on the gravy train that need filling.
Free internet is something that will not happen (for a while, anyway). We have a monopoly in terms of telco providers (as in regulated by law!), and they also have the monopoly on supplying our international links. You can look at a standard latency of 600ms for crossing the Atlantic via satellite (or whatever awful copper cable there probably still lies on the seabed). Some recent upstarts have tried selling a advertising-based 'free' internet service, but it is so hopelessly flooded that you'd better not hope on getting decent bandwidth.
Above all, we're mostly all still on modems. ISDN is relatively new (not to mention expensive), and DSL has only been available in a few select places at rediculous prices.
But, somehow, the ISP market is flourishing. You see all these fly-by-night episodes, and even mother ISPs are offering a 'virtual ISP' job, where you have no physical equipment. You just basically resell a bigger ISP's service.
In any case, it's not the government's priority now to supply people with free internet. South Africa recently passed the 1.6million internet users, and (memory serving) that comprises of 90% of Africa's total usage. The thing is - it is just not an option now.
On the upside, many companies are jumping to constructively use the internet to their advantage. I was pleasantly surprised to find the local railway's time schedule online, albeit just in one huge table. So, I think given time, companies with a bit of genius will get to the forefront of development in this arena. Just think of Thawte!- ----------
----------------------------------------
-------------------------------------------------
This sig could have been put to good use.
Iran tried to do the same thing in the 60's and 70's by sending many of it's brightest to the west to increase their skills/education. Problem was that many of them got used to a western life style and decided to stay in the west. Others that returned found that they couldn't continue their work on physics (for example) since the country was lacking in advanced equipment. The key seems to be the last part of your statement. Remember that building an infrastructure to many countries still means food/water as opposed to DSL connection.
Interrestingly enough, some of my family have e-mail/web access. Not sure if they can get to whitehouse.com though :)
You mean like the way that the CIA has operatives in the national newsrooms of the major TV networks and wire services?
Hardly anybody gets jailed, but they do get bought, or run out of business, or denied access to information and resources. Generally, the kinder, gentler form of media control practiced by the US government within its own borders happens by consensus between government and industry. Outside of US borders, however, the harrassment, jailing, and assassination of publishers and media figures by persons or agencies supported by the US is well-known.
I'm guessing you don't want to see
Since alot of the technology workers in the US take trips to Nepal, many of you might know, just how amazing thinking about the internet in Nepal actually is.
Ever occur to you that the internet is so advanced there precisely because a lot of tech workers take trips to Nepal?
======
"Rex unto my cleeb, and thou shalt have everlasting blort." - Zorp 3:16
Sacred cows make the best burgers.
Being a Pakistani I was a bit offended by someone putting Pakistan in the same league as Ethiopia. But I will put that aside.
And being Ethiopian, I am offended by your insinuation that somehow Pakistan is better than Ethiopia. Until you examine your own chauvanist attitudes, you have no cause to complain about those of others.
I actually thought about this quite a bit back in the early 90s when I was seriously thinking about opening an ISP in Mongolia. The nice people at Magic Net (http://www.magic.mn/) beat me to it though.
At the time, my plan was to initially sell access to the government, foreign corporations with offices in the country, and scientific research stations. I even had some prototype packet radio units that could be used on fossil digs.
The surprising thing is that many of these ISP that have popped up in places you least expect are thriving. They keep their equipment costs low and they don't have the super high customer acquisition costs that burn so much money for providers in the US. I don't know how profitable they are, but I think that they are probably doing better than most ISPs in developed countries.
Starting an ISP in a country with no telephone or network infrastructure is not for the easily intimidated. Clearly there are many places in the world where people are more concerned with survival than the color scheme in the YRO section of Slashdot. Still, starting an ISP in a developing country may provide a positive jump start in a way that would not happen otherwise.
Thanks for all the posts in the discussion on this, it is something that has been a topic of conversation amongst my freinds and I for quite some time now. I also want to take the time to apologize to my Pakastani freinds, I used that coutry as only an example, I hadn't realized that it was as prolific as you described. My conclusions: 1. Most people in most countries in the world are not *completely* steeped in poverty. While there are people that have problems finding dinner, the vast majority of people in most countries DO in fact have their basic needs taken care of. And like a gentlemen said, "famine is often not caused by an lack of food, but a lack of distribution." While their standard of living in general may not be that of the US, their basic needs are there, food, shelter, etc... This belief that these places are so backwoods as to not know of anything but making grass sandals and finding some bugs to eat is sorry. They are not THAT uncivilized. 2. The spread of the Internet can and will aid these coutries to gain a foothold on a better way of living--And it must. To not become technologically capable in business will push these countries further down the ladder. Because as time goes on they will not even be able to do business, this is due to the entire model of global commerce changing towards E-based so rapidly. In ten years a business that is not E capable in some way shape or form will not exist. 3. The biggest fear is fear of the truth (I get all of mine from /. ;) and information. This goes for the governments: the distribution of truth and freedom will not only lead to a better way of living, it will also lead to more free societies, which means that tyrannical governments will fall. 4. Many people who leave places like India (which does consider technologically educated people a comodity) want to return to do their work in the home they love eventually. I think that the creation of such education in a society eventually leads to them gaining new ground in the world. 5. While the "American Culture" may currently be the dominate culture in the world, we are heading into a time of global culture. We go to Ichi Ban's here, they go to Cowboy Bars over there. The essense of every culture is slowly getting incorporated into a global society and one of the things helping fuel this is the Internet. Yes, some aspects of some cultures will get lost. It has been that way for a more than one mellinium, and it will always be that way. Time moves on people, get over it. The question is how these cultures can best move themselves into the new age. The answer is threefold: Education, information, and technology. These three things put together is what provides us with so much here in the US, and others so little elsewhere. The expansion of technology is a good thing no matter how you slice it. The tribes will have internet access and the rich will too. Also, the very nature of the Internet means that it will never be completely controlled by ANYONE. The availability of information leads to a more informed and educated populace which raises the standard of living for everyone. No, the homeless guy doesn't care about the internet. But those people trying to make things better for him do... DiZNoG
But I think that in places where survival and hunger are major concerns, people just don't have the time or energy to worry about internet access. Ask a homeless man on the streets of NYC what he thinks about the internet and see what he says. I'm pretty sure he won't give a crap because he's more concerned about where he'll sleep and whether he'll eat.
And I'd imagine third world citizens have similar worries that far overshadow their opinions on net access and its implications on commerce.
The_Morlock
-----
So you say life sucks? Well, life is what you make of it.
so if your life sucks, YOU suck.
-----
So you say life sucks? Well, life is what you make of it.
so if your life sucks, YOU suck.
-----BR
... so-called "third world" countries are trying desperately to find ways to make sure their citizens don't starve. To be honest, any country whose citizens can, en masse, afford the luxury of computers, let alone the internet, does not really qualify as a third-world country.
Intercarve Networks, LLC
Well if you're going to argue over logic with him then you should reliase that comparing slavery to IP rights is not valid analogy, and therefore logically indifferent. They are two very different concepts.
<b>The open source community fights against all manner of arbitrary barriers to information.</b> And now we are seeing its effects transformed from a fun game to a moral imperative.
Just my $.02
Want to work at Transmeta? Hedgefund.net? Priceline?
Can your IM do this?
I recently heard a story on NPR about a group in Massachusetts who started something called the Geek Corps. They go to third-world countries and help companies build up an Internet presence, in the hopes of beefing up internet access for the entire community. Anyway, something to look into.
Why are all these "lazy and apathetic" third worlders trying to get into the first world and working incredibly hard in brutal low paid jobs here? How did that plane ticket make them energetic? Answer, it didn't.
When you have a third world society that has centuries of history where whoever advanced got his advances stolen from him, you are going to have this learned helplessness. It isn't illogical to reject a false hope that is only going to get you shot, robbed, or otherwise punished by the local thug.
Information freedom is one tool to combat government thievery that exists throughout the third world. But it isn't enough and in general the everyday people who suffer under the system don't have the reserves necessary to resist the local thugs to *keep* what their progress earns them. When the internet can do that for them (say 5-10 years down the road) then the third world will become instantly energetic and productive. Think electronic fund keeping for micropayments. It's what's needed but we're not quite there yet.
DB
The idea has been that the third world is also "underdeveloped" or "developing", i.e. not satisfied with where they are as you paint these idyllic scenes of Nepal. You raise an interesting point because that's where we are all likely to end up at some point, barring theft by thugs (government or otherwise), with enough material resources for our own desires and enough padding for natural disasters. You might want to look up ESR's "The Magic Cauldron" and envision what a society like that would be where it isn't just the technical subgroup that participates in a gift culture.
But I would argue that the angry third world that is looking to get in on the action (and the section that you agree with me on) is what is generally meant by the "third world". Maybe there is a need for a new term...
DB
My brother's wife is Nepali (-ee?). I hear there's both sides of the coin (relatively speaking). There's a *lot* of poverty as well as a lot of Land Rovers.
But I don't know personally.
"One man can change the world with a bullet in the right place."
- Mick Travis, "If..."
If you're a troll, then you're not very funny, and if you're serious, you're a moron.
No, that's merely an insult, it would be better to be perfectly literal, you're an idiot. Look it up in a dictionary with etymologies. An idiot is precisely what you are.
Sincerely WDK - WKiernan@concentric.net
One important aspect to consider is the attitude towards western society and gadgets altogether. There is a simultaneous resentment and eager sense of curiosity, since 1st world countries have effectively all the power in the world market. Citizens of (for example) Kenya resist changes towards becoming "too western," but also realize that a degree of change is the way to economic (and therefore political) liberation.
Before the peace corps flames me: I realize this is a simplification. But it's mostly true.
Anyway, that's the basis of feelings towards the internet as well. Someone above asked "how can people in 3rd world countries even afford computers?" The answer is, overwhelmingly, they can't. Very few families, and virtually no individuals, have PCs. Computers are always a business and/or community resource. There are plenty of ISPs in Kenya, and they either have offices where you can come in to use a terminal, or local businesses get a single connection and rent it by the hour to make a little extra revenue.
So who can afford that, you ask? Well, admittedly, it's mostly the tourists, peace corps, and upper upper classes of natives. I paid around $10 per hour for internet service while I was there, and that's completely out of the question for a lot of people. So, it's still very much a priviledge or, depending on how you take it, a sign of the entrenched oligarchy, to be able to use the internet in the third world.
Because access is so limited, I wouldn't say that social change has been severe due to the internet. Not nearly so significant as TV, which often has a horrible effect on developing countries, Kenya not excepted. But that's another topic. It does help some businesses, however, particularly local media outlets. When they post on the web, the local papers can be taken more seriously in a global setting and help to keep the diaspora connected to their homeland. While this might not imply a huge economic upturn anytime soon, it's certainly having some small, positive effects.
Whew! I did both of those URLs from memory; now I'm off to preview and check 'em... Oops! Looks like the Nation Online (link #2) hasn't been updated in quite some time. That's weird. It was working quite well when I was there. That's another problem with internet in Kenya: the whole "hakuna matata" attitude pervades pretty much everything, including stuff like public utilities and, it looks like, updating one's website. Oh well; it's nice when it works!
Okay, I did some more investigation into the Nation Online page, and it looks like they're just not redirecting the way they used to. I tracked down the new, REAL site if anyone was curious to check out an east African newspaper online.
Speaking English is an issue I suppose, but judging from the number of American-born people whom I can't understand without great effort, this isn't necessarily an advantage you get from living in the West.
--
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
It's really hard to laugh at a story like this when the geography is all wrong; someone from E. Laconia would just answer "Internet sucks". ;-)
--
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
For those of us who are involved in IT, bandwidth is hard to come by and extremely expensive. Hopefully that will change once the communication monopolies crumble.
--- Brian the Wise Friend to Small Fury Animals Everywhere...
I think that the internet is changing the world, especially in third-world nations, but not for the reasons that most westerners believe. Most of us believe that the main force of the internet and the internet "revolution" is about freeing up information and giving everyone access to as much information (whether it is research, commerce, or stock feeds) at our fingertips 24 hrs a day. This doesn't necessarily hold true.
Take for instance chinese peasants living a few hours outside of a city (example not based on true story). In trying to further an economic boom in their country and believing that connecting these people to the internet would stimulate this, the country lays down communication wires and better power grids and maybe even gives them computers to access the internet. Now these people can get on the internet. Everyone in the western world thinks that these people are immediately going to be researching free-market economics and democratic governments and such because these ideals are important to us and our vision of the internet. We're forgetting one of the main uses of the internet because we take it for granted. Communication. In getting connected to the web, these fairly isolated people are finally getting reliable access to a phone and are able to now keep in contact with friends and family that live outside the realm of local travel.
Social changes will occur when this happens, but not the social changes that us internet idealists think are going to happen. Email, videoconferencing, and instant messaging will probably be the biggest hits if and when the internet comes to third-world countries.
As in all Systems, adding a new factor or changing such a strong variable will affect other parts of the system. Maybe those changes such as economic and governmental ideals will filter in, maybe they won't. Chances are that something will change... or the reaction could be similar to that of the Hasidic Jews in Brooklyn (rabbi schnearson's group) or even how the Pennsylvania Dutch approach technology. Who knows.
fav Yunus quote:
>
Poverty is not created by the poor people. Poverty is created by the institutions that we have built around us. We have to go back to the drawing board, to redesign those institutions, so that they do not discriminate the poor, because the present ones do.
http://www.grameen.com/mcredit/weapon.ht ml
The war against poverty, in the long run, may prove to be the most profitable business on the 'net and planet.. it will obviously expand the marketplace for trading and sharing ideas..
re: infrastructure.. um.. in China, even with low annual incomes, cel phone usage ka-booms. Users pay by listening to ads. Sound familiar? Extrapolate this, along with Gilder's, Moore's, and Metcalfe's Laws.. Billions will have full access in a decade, almost for free. Since the 'net is a global medium and evolving jurisdiction, it will transform all goverments faster than we think.
Free software is sharing an increasing wealth of knowledge (power) without discrimation against the poor.. this is a radical shift away from centralized control and domination by force and money-as-we-know-it.. and watch out for freenet:
http://freenet.sourceforge.net
http://wired.com/news/print/0,1294,34768,00.html"
also, re infrastructure, check out:
http://www.media.mit.edu/unwired/more/ and
http://www.greenstar.org
Wow, you SV reporters just look around and think you're seeing the whole world, maybe you even fly to NYC, and Tokyo. Why not take a stop in Casper? or Billings? or Twin Falls? or Topeka? or Rawlings? or Lubbock? or
Elko? or Flagstaff? or Sante Fe? or Grand Forks? Y'all heard of any of these places? Or is that just "fly over country" to ya? No sir, most of America is not wired or accustomed to the net. It's still brand spanking new tech.
I am in one of these places (read anywhere but "Silicon Valley") and I have internet access and there are many places that do offer it. Unless you live like Ted Kazenski in the hills of Montana you can get on the internet if you are willing to pay.
Slashdot social engineering at it's finest
this is the whole point though, who said anything about international dissent, half our problems are being caused by US companies. Specifically MS, MPAA, and RIAA. All very heavy in to copyrights, and all very willing to act
extremely unethically (perhaps violent) to uphold them. BTW, copyrights are definitely on the way out. When it comes to bogus property rights, they are taking the path that slavery did.
Proof? references? it looks like hearsay to me.
Slashdot social engineering at it's finest
I honestly have no idea how other countries will deal with the internet. Countries like the US that tend to allow more freedom of expression can't even handle it. Every time I turn arround someone wants to sue an mp3 site, censor in
the name of stopping porn, jerk away peoples domain names without due process, restrict the export of encryption, and force people to remove DVD code from their web sites.
Think slowly and carefully now and take in these little facts.
1. The average access to technology outside the US is usually even more restricted than it is here. Computers tend to cost more and online access is more difficult to attain. This can take many forms the least of which is per minute fees for even simple local calls. Tends to interfere with being online for any ammount of time when you are getting billed for anything you do.
2. More people in sheer numbers are on the internet in the USA or from ISPs in the USA. Generally problems that plague the US will also start to creep into other areas as well. Remember it's a global ecconomy now.
Yes I think it is safe to say, the US of A definitely can not handle what's going on - and if anything goes down - it will go down here first. In fact, it is almost frightening, because many large corporations have bet over a trillion
dollars on the assumption that copyrights are a basic right, they're not, they're not sustainable, and they're not enforcable. It's only a matter of time before all hell breaks loose.
I don't think that international pressure could change a damn thing that the US does. In all international bodies that count the US leads so exactly how is "all hell" going to break loose. You are pretty vague here I don't think that the copyright system will be taken down anytime soon especially becuase of international dissent.
Slashdot social engineering at it's finest
there is compelling reason because even though slavery and copyrights have nothing to do with each other in terms of human treatment, they are almost the exact same in terms of the arguments used to uphold them as a property
right. Try it, give me an argument that's used to justify intellectual-property that wasn't also used to justify slave property.
Well maybe if I have spent oh say 10 years of my life to develop a concept or a process and I decide I want to get some money from my suffering and hard work then I should be able to.
Slashdot social engineering at it's finest
The average access to technology outside the US is usually even more restricted than it is here. Computers tend to cost more and online access is more difficult to attain. This can take many forms the least of which is per minute fees :)
for even simple local calls. Tends to interfere with being online for any ammount of time when you are getting billed for anything you do. Hmm, I'm thinking NOT.. at least not in Canada. Here ADSL is a viable option: $40/mth
with 2.5 mbps for access speeds, available in pretty much any major community (at least where I am), from what I've heard, the States are still trying to push ISDN! Honestly, the phone networks in Canada kick the shit out of what is
down in the states. Computers cost the same amount, are just as available and just as highly used. I agree that European countries may have it a little harder, but don't forget your Neighbours in the north.. Ok, Ok, maybe I'm biased,
I do work for a phone company after all
Probably because ISDN is expensive and not that interesting because it's limited in speed.
Slashdot social engineering at it's finest
I live in inner-city Boston (population ~2 million). We have our pick of dial-up ISPs, but DSL is very expensive (and limited). We're wired for cable, yet cable modem service will "hopefully" be here by December.
I used to live in the Berkshires. My old stomping ground (population 16,000). They got cable modem last year, and probably have DSL.
Put my clarinet beneath your bed 'till I get back in town.
The once-vibrant boardwalk in Weirs Beach is this very minute all boarded up and desolate.
Hmmm. Could that be because not many people find New Hampshire beaches attractive in March? How many spring-breakers say "Screw Daytona Beach, we're going to Hampton!". Riding the waves when it's 20 outside doesn't strike me as much fun.Put my clarinet beneath your bed 'till I get back in town.
In Saudi Arabia, the single largest impedance of widespread internet service/access is the government, which (understandably..) doesn't want "subversive" materials to reach the masses.
They use the excuse of pornography, but that's already completely meaningless.. after all, with a satellite dish one can view all of that stuff with ease.
The money is there. I know several people who wanted to set up an ISP, or at least finance one.
The infrastructure is also largely there, barring the actual pipes to the outside which are really just a matter of getting some official ball rolling with the telecom.
But what really kills access is the requirement that EVERYTHING must go through a central proxy server. That's quite a bottleneck. And it's running NT. *sigh*
Anyway.
-- I ain't broke, but I'm badly bent.
We are not lucky. We have provided a system in which the inventors in our society can grow up and invent things, sell them, and gain more resources to invent even greater things. because of this we have wires running all over the globe, we have the Internet, we have computers, we have microwaves and Tang. The reason these other countries do not have such things are not because we're smarter or anything (although we do have more opportunity to experience a wider range of technology simply because it is everywhere), it's because of the systems they're living with. For instance, China. China has 1 billion people and the majority of their country is still egrarian. Why? Beaucse when someone rises up and shows that they are more able than the person next two them they are either reigned by the government and used for the benefit of the empowered group of people or they are told that everyone is equal, no one is better than any other, if he has a burst of energy he should use it to benefit his "fellow man" and all that crap. In America and Canada and other capitalist societies when people see someone doing something great they say "Kick ass man, keep going, I want to buy that when you're done, maybe I'll even invest in you!".
Very different worlds, and it was not luck. Remember your history, America was the first country founded on ideals and not on happenstance of geographic location, religious separatism, etc...
Esperandi
No, if you lived in a third world country you'd be more interested in waiting on a care package from the United States or from the UN. Third World citizens no longer understand the need to fight for life, the need to go out and get a job and get food to feed their families. They just know that food "comes". Where it comes from, how it gets there, how long it will continue, they have no clue. All they know is that the old way of the world when you used to have to exert effort to survive is gone.
So tell me, how would those people get the initiative to really work to get Internet access?
Esperandi
Someone needs to inform my fellow Americans that Pakistan is a nuclear power, not what I'd call a "third world" country.
"Prejudice is wrong; you should hate everyone the same."
I think there are several points to remember when speaking of 3rd world nations. First, some nations, such as Afghanistan, have nothing coming close to human rights, at least if you consider women humans, I do. However, TV is illegal in Afghanistan, so mabye it isn't the best example. Second, Even some of the countries that do have human rights sometimes have very 'odd' cultural views. For instance, in parts of Africa, a 'cure' for aids is to have sex with a virgin girl. No wonder a fifth of Africa is dying from Aids, or will in the next 10 years. Third. I wonder if the developed worlds energies would be better spent on improving basic infrastructure instead of internet infrastructure. Who care if there is an ISP available to you if you don't healthy drinking water, or if your nations ruler is a maniac? OTOH, mabye bringing internet to these parts of the world can inform the rest of the world to the plight of living in these areas _or_ help some of the inhabitants of third world contiries learn how to better influence thier own governments for social change.
Pair up in threes. - Yogi Berra
That goes for the USA, as well, so that in itself means little.
Stefan.
The truth shall make you fret. (Ankh-Morpork tImes motto)
English becomes the dominant language of countries that embrace the web and international e-commererce. This will result in cultural fragmentation/evolution in many countries. India and Pakistan are probably the most online third world countries because many citizens of these countries know enough english to understand english web sites and can therefore make use of the english web.
Can anyone tell me what the breakdown of web sites is by language (pie charts would be useful)
I'd really like to see a pie chart animation from 1990 onward with regard to #of sites in which language and another with bandwidth/site language.
I'll bet english is totally dominant on the bandwidth but loosing ground on the #of sites/language. What is the #2 language? Spanish? German? What is the fastest growing non-english language?
Does anyone know the stats?
no sig.
First of all I'm surprised at how far apart the perception and the reality of Pakistan are on slashdot. Internet penetration is apparently deeper than many think, (deeper than I thought, I was surprised when several of my cousins sent me emails).
...well, human development (this report was originally started by a Pakistani economist, Dr. Habib-ur-Rehman, although I'm not sure of the name).
:)
Many have said that poor countries need to feed their poor before trying to acquire the net. Actually the communication capabilities the internet provides can help poor societies a great deal (another post already points to work done by a Bengladeshi professor Mohammad Yunis and his Grameen Bank). The recent nobel prize winning economist Indian economist Amartya Sen said that famines were not caused becasue of lack of food but because of lack of distribution. I haven't read his work but if it has to do with identifying towns or villages that are hardest hit, a network of concerned citizens with something like the internet may save countless lives. Just for good measure I should mention that the United Nations Human Development Index includes internet penetration as one of the criteria in measuring
Abuse of the middle class is a mojor problem in many third world countries. The rich can afford (or ignore) the whims of the government of the day. The poor don't have anything so they don't have to fear anything taken from them. The middle class are the ones with at least some education who use their acquired education in offices or shops. Making things easier for them, such as cheap phone calls (dialpad.com) could greatly improve their quality of life. Many families have to either spend a great deal of money on phone calls to loved ones, or hold off on those expensive calls and not talk to their relatives and friends for long periods of times.
There are often labor intensive businesses in poor countries (with cheap labor). American companies have made a great deal of progress through information technology (not necessarily improved producitivy, but with the ability to do things that couldn't be done before such as better decisions due to better and timely date). Third world companies are often quite profitable due to cheap resources (and too often only due to cheap resources). If they could become more efficient (maximize their profits), it would greatly help their business and therefore their community (increased profit while keeping the same number of employees means each employee is contributing more towards a company's revenue, therefore, up to a limit, hiring more employees will increase revenue even more).
Unfortunately no one can take advantage of these things unless internet is available to more (MANY) more people. In the case of Pakistan (and much of the world, rich or poor) the cost and the lack of local content and localized user interface are obstacles that no government can reduce. The government of Pakistan has been quite liberal in promoting the IT sector (reduced taxes, cheap imports, 'technology parks,' etc.) Unfortunately it is a fact that phone calls are expensive. Even after our telecommunications company is privatized, the new owners will sure want to make some kind of living. Currently too few people even have a phone, wiring a location for internet becomes very expensive when the cost of adding phones is included (this basically applies to villages).
I believe the problem of lack of/expensive infrastructure can be, at least partially, solved through wireless internet (lets see what happens with internet over electric cables). If the right kind of equipment exists (perhaps like nokia's new wireless routers), even neighborhoods themselves could band together and get some sort of community based internet (with tech. support from local universities/government/NGOs or something). [SIDE NOTE: WE NEED CASE STUDIES ON HOW THIS IS DONE, NOT JUST POINT TO POINT WIRELESS CONNECTION WRITEUPS].
Localized content will exist once enough people have internet, it is only natural. There have been some surprising developments though. Again, I'm more familiar with Pakistan--a surprising amount of government information is online. A lot of ministries (at least federal) have their own websites. I needed some information from Pakistan Post Office so I sent them an email, I was surprised to receive a very detailed, timely, to the point and polite response. The huge number of Pakistani expatriats have cause a lot of e-commerce operations to go live. One can easily find book sellers, travel agents, people selling sweets (mithai), etc. This can't be targeted toward more than a million or two Pakistanis. Imagine what will happen when even a small portion of 140 million Pakistanis come online.
I believe the problem of Urdu (and punjabi/pushto/sindhi/balochi/etc/etc/etc and other languages of Pakistan) on computers is something that needs to be solved. Let's assume we expect people to use Linux (...just assume it already), developments such as the Pango project (which will enable urdu in X-Windows) at red-hat labs (www.pango.org) will help us overcome this problem (BTW: pango is a solution for almost all non-latin based languages, urdu was just an example). In the first stage only content storage is required. Most people who end up using a computer (at least in Pakistan) know enough english to get used to the menus (in other words they can read...they don't have to know the meaning because 'File' or 'Edit' themselves are not intuitive manu titles). Once one can store local language letters, contracts, emails, etc. computers become an order of magnitude more useful. In order to roll computers out to farmers and average citizens, not only do we need an intuitive interface in local language but also make it easy to use for those who are not completely literate (there is a reason fast food places get a lot of use out of their picture menus at airports, more people understand a picture than written words).
As a side note, when I say roll computers out to farmers or average citizens, I don't necessiraly mean a linux box or a pc. I mean a device that is connected to the internet. What they need is not computation but the network.
Finally, there was talk of social changes (which I guess what the original question). I think newspapers add great deal of value to the internet for expatriates of all kinds. Reading Pakistani news-papers (of which there are quite a few, and not just in English) became part of my routine somewhere along the way without me even knowing it. Where as before a news paper might have reported on an important speech, law or tready, now they are able to put the whole text online. At least in Pakistan, many of the letters published in the printed press are actually from overseas Pakistanis, foreigners and Indians (those who understand south asian politics know this is no small feat). I'm sure the same is true of India. True power of internet journalism became apparent when during a recent conflict the government of India banned a Pakistani newpaper site (perhaps it was an overzealous private ISP, can't really remember). Almost immediately alternative ways were provided for people inside India to read the newspaper. I believe an Indian newspaper itelf started mirroring the Pakistani paper. I'm sure the same would happen if the Pakistan government banned an Indian site. [Side note, I'm not totally opposed to "censors" however. I'm yet to be convinced of why pornography and bomb building instructions must be available to a society...the technical problem of stopping porn filters from filtering political speech not withstanding].
A few things I said are bound take make the economists on slashdot sick to their stomach. Please understand that I simiplified what I said since this is basically for a technical audience, not economist. Besides, I myself am a Computer Science student, what do you expect
My point is that *most* people are not on the net and don't have an email address outside the tech hub areas. Sure AOL has dial up points just about everywhere. Want DSL or cablemodem speed access and don't live in a tech zone? Forget it. The net is still a toy or "entertainment" or a diversion for the kids.
Bismarck, North Dakota, where I live, has DSL and cable modem services. The online version of our newspaper is read regularly by snowbirds (retired North Dakotans who spend winters in warmer climates).
My mom, who teaches fifth grade in a rural Oklahoma town (about 30 miles from the next medium-sized city), says at least half of her students have e-mail addresses and Net access, and she wants me to help her set up a Web site with math information and homework assignment listings.
Rural doesn't mean out of touch. Do some research on modern farming - a lot of it includes online supply purchasing and price checking. Rural areas, much more so than cities, depend on the Internet to stay in touch. Sure, they're less likely to get DSL access in smaller markets, but don't call the Internet a 'toy' for rural America. It's a vital tool for news, communication and shopping for people who *don't* live near large cities.
Slash has nothing to do with Slashdot.
I swear so many people who are brought up in the west have totally ignorant views of what it means to be poor in a poor country.
Yes, I agree. But by your stereotyping you fall into this category yourself. Not EVERY third world country resident doesn't have food, doesn't have clothes or no water, etc.
When I was in Kenya (admittedly one of the richer third world countries but still desperate in places) about three months ago, I realised that it is not just the people affected by the famines that live there, but there is some educated and knowledgable people also who want to learn as much as they can so that they can escape the poverty.
Should we worry about these countries getting the internet and computers AS WELL as the problems they have at the moment? Yes. Should they always be trying to catch up with us, the people who have everything? Why should they be? Perhaps if they got access to computers and the internet there could be an upsurge in the economies, because perhaps they would be able to make money from selling their wares via an e-commerce site.
Please, get down off that there high horse.
Mash
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While this question might be interesting in terms of pure curiosity, I don't think that the lack of internet access in third world countries is a big enough problem to worry about. People *need* food, clean water, medical care, shelter, etc. They do *not* need internet access. I realize that one of the up-and-coming attitudes in our culture (esp. Slashdot culture) is that net access is this magical source of enlightenment and power of which no human being should be deprived, but for most it is merely a source of entertainment and information. Yes, perhaps increased internet access could marginally help the economy in third world countries, but since only the richest fraction of a third world country's population can afford a computer, don't excpect to see much of an economic or social impact on a vast majority of the population.
Until at least the mid-1960's, this kind of communcation system was even endemic in British neighborhoods -- using not cell-phones, of course, but actual telephones! When we, in the U.S., wanted to speak immediately with my grandmother (in her own wholly-owned home) we called the neighbor down the street, whose name and number we had been provided for that purpose.
Those U.S. folk who assume Internet access is for individuals, and is therefore not economically attractive enough for third-world communities, do not understand how extremely individualistic the U.S. is. The more normal social group (whether extended families/clan or tribe, or non-kinship groups living together in small geographical area) finds great value in this kind of knowledge utility/store/communication utility!
In fact, India in particular is very active in promoting Internet use. The pattern of Internet usage generally seems to be following the earlier pattern of television usage: it is considered an extremely valuable community asset (tv was used for information and education generally, also for specific issues such as public health and birth control training/development).
Anyway, I went back late last year and I was quite at awe that ISP's have mushroomed all over the country. I borrowed a friend's dialup account and voila! No more long distance dialups, and rates are getting more and more competitive.
My only concern is, Filipinos are religious fanatics and when the leader says something, the flock follows. Most religious leaders (more like pigs) see the internet as the work of the devil -- a source of pornographic materials. They are currently working with public pigs (gov't officials) on censorship and banning internet in schools.
The internet is changing the Filipino society. The established companies (monopolies) are now being threatened by startups -- something that I think will bring competiveness back to the (pig controlled, crony-infested) economy. I just hope startups hold on and resist on being bought out by one of the large-monopolizing companies.
stay cool.
I have my choice of several local ISPs, plus many of the national ones, all with local telephone numbers. AOL, Compuserve, Earthlink and Sprint, among others are just a free phone call away.
My choice of connection types are limited, however - I simply cannot get any form of DSL or ISDN: I am too far from the central office. Cable modem is out of the question - my television comes via C-band satelite.
And to the person who mentioned Lubbock, Texas - The people there have their choice of two local ISPs (maybe more, now) in addition to some of the nationals.
Yes, the US *IS* wired - except maybe for some of the suburbs 8-). Let's hear from some of the more remotely located readers!!
Interestingly, the Los Angeles Times had an article sort of on this, on March 5th. In the business section, James Flanigan discussed the need to "build up infrastructure, in telecommunications, pollution control, medicine, air transportation and many other fields." According the article, India has a labor force of 314 million, and 300,000 high-tech workers. The middle-class is about 250 million with an income from $10-$25,000/yr. He suggests foreign business should be interested in India.
However, I find, social ramification of NGOs and MNCs of more interest in these LDCs. (i.e. What is the effect of Coca-Cola, IBM, and Honda in India?)
Visit uMoo - http://www.uMoo.com/ See the 'holy cow' of talk
As far as government response, you might be forced at the ISP level to censor and filter content and monitor users.
Check out
or
some excerpts...
"[a Thai police proposal] demanded that the Telephone Organization of Thailand (TOT) implement caller-ID features for all local Internet Service Providers. Caller-ID would be used to gather information about each user logging onto the network, including the telephone numbers they used, their login names and the times of the day they connected and disconnected."
and in Russia....
"The Russian state police proposed a plan to monitor every piece of data sent over the Internet within Russia's boundaries. Proposed amendments to the mass media law which were discussed in the Russian Duma in March 1998 included a clause suggesting that any publisher of electronic information should register with and obtain a license from the government."
-oikazeWhat you must understand is that although a government, such as the Ethiopian government, may have control over most of the media in their country, they rarely can stop locals from accessing news from outside if that is what they want to see. In Addis Abeba foreign newspapers are available (all be it at a vastly expanded price). The problem for internet access is more of an infrastructure problem than a cultural one.
I think you're right for the most part but you might be surprised. I live in Lincoln, NE, which I think compares with Topeka and Grand Forks in a lot of ways, and our telco started offering DSL over a year ago. They even gave away routers if you signed up within the first month. I suppose we'll have cable internet access soon too since AOL now owns our cable company.
Lincoln probably got this before other cities its size because it has a large university and a big-ass internet hub sits in the engineering building on UNL's campus. I wouldn't be surprised to find the same situation in Lubbock and maybe Topeka.
My parents live about 50 miles south of here and they just got access to a local dialup a few months ago. Still even with their 56K modem, they're lucky to get 1.5 K/sec over those lines out there in the country that are probably decades old. Maybe that's why I don't visit them more often. Wireless wide-band is probably their only hope because the town they live in is too small to even have cable service.
Are you a god damn git?
A C++ book would be great to be able to learn C++ if you
a) had food
b) had clothes
c) had water
c) didn't have any severe untreated medical conditions
d)were able to actually walk into a professional place of work without getting kicked out
e) actually had some math skills to be able to do some useful work
f) have been taught to read
g) Have a house and for the computer and books that you own so that they don't get wet, not to mention the money to pay for maitinaing the computer
A person born in the ghetto will live grow old an die in the ghetto. I swear so many people who are brought up in the west have totally ignorant views of what it means to be poor in a poor country.
This is the last post I'm going to be replying to, I am convinvced these kind of comments show that most of /. never got out of grade 4. Your suggestions are beyond ignorant. Spend a day in the average suburban area in a country like India, then you'll get it. If you are unemployed in most 3rd world countries you don't have much of a house and you proabably don't have electricity. How the fuck are you supposed to play the stockmarket without a house to put your computer in and the electricity to run it? You probably have no decent access to clean clothes, so you will get kicked out of any sort of public access. There won't be company that will hire you unless you are reasonably educated or have the money to provide for your education by yourself (the money supplying things like food, light shelter, and then books). THank you for letting us know with a bit of hard work and a dash of creativity a 60 year old man on the streets of India can go from rags to riches...I am serisouly considering writing /. article highling stupid posts like this one and letting people know that opensource ideals and internet access have very little to with the life of most people on this earth and they won't feed and clothe them.
The internet is all well and good but you have to remind yourselves of one thing. Alot of people in the "hardcore" third world countries like Etheopia, etc. aren't worried about getting their daily slashdot fix. they're worried about getting food. I don't think the internet is going to catch on anytime soon in countries with a primary export of dirt. In the U.S and other major powers around the world...all our needs are met. We can move on to other things. Untill third world countries figure out a way to get everyone fed, clothed, and sheltered...the internet isn't going anywhere.
-FluX
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"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." -David Hume
I returned in 1998 to Hanoi (about city number 3 by population, about 3 million), with a plan to set up the Internet at my favourite restaurant. On the way there, I saw a cafe called Cybernet cafe. They had 3 PCs, and were thriving on tourists and foreign workers, and they had a better scanner than in my 1000-person research facility in Australia. While I was there, they expanded to 4 PCs.
I thought this was just in the better off part of town. So I picked a really poor part, and on my way to a down-and-out hotel, I saw yet another Internet hotel.
So I gave up my plan. There were just Internet cafes and hotels etc. all over the place. I suggested the idea at my local favourite restaurant in the medieval quarter of the city. He said: no problem, I have heaps of money, but I just need to "arrange it" with the Cong An (the local police). Next day, I saw him discussing it with his local police officer.
Conclusion:
Vietnam is a US$1 per person per day country, and they increased internet usage very noticeably from 1997 to 1998. I have my own list of VN ISPs, and one of them is now expanding into the USA.
The third world is _not_ missing out on the Internet. It's happening.
Seiously though , the net is a great cultural resource (if you are white, male and living in the west , speaking english...) but most LDC's have far too many problems to overcome. Lack of money due to poor resources, oppression, exploitation and debt. Poor telecommunications infrastructure (apart from maby south africa which has one of the best) and relative abject poverty. The net could help, although baseline education would be better.
Countries such as India are pumping out some of the best developers/etc. and these people maybe could be seen as a national resource in much the same way as gold/oil. If LDC's can develop education structures to build a skilled workforce and get help building the infrastructure then maybe it may work.
Although there would be a lot of developers, etc. who would not be happy when the market is filled with cheaper, more skilled labour and they were no longer able to charge stupid rates...
Working for the (other) man
As far as internet usage in third world countries is concerned, much like the economies and industries of various third world countries, and specifically of Pakistan, it is a developing process. it is quite acceptable and heavily used within the limited circles it exists in. however, with increasing awareness and steady competition from burgeoning ISP's, internet usage is growing. moving from urban city centres into smaller towns and communities. The Government of Pakistan promotes the "computerisation" of educational institutions and bureacratic departments while remaining vaguely neutral over the freedom and anarchist ideals the internet symbolises. however, the overall impression one comes away with regarding internet usage in Pakistan is that it is slowly expanding, gaining acceptance within various different social circles. Moreso, it seems, than in American social circles, where internet usage actually appears to be on the decline!!
t ml
An article in this months Scientific American reported the following:
"A November 1999 research report from Cyber Dialogue, an Internet database marketing firm, warned e-commerce companies that they were going to have to work harder in the future: the stampede onto the Internet has slowed in the U.S. The survey cites three constraints to growth. First, it takes money to get connected, and many of those off-line simply can't afford Internet access. Second, a third of American adults believe that they have no need for the Internet and have no intention of getting on-line. Third, 27.7 million Americans have tried the Internet--and dropped it; the number is triple that measured in 1997." the article may be found at
http://www.sciam.com/2000/0300issue/0300cyber.h
For example, back in the seventies and eighties, all video in the USSR was made by the state. A black market for good movies emerged, mostly consisting of Western (American) entertainment. The people of the Soviet Union realized that Americans had a much better life than they had, with luxury minivans, mansions, GE refridgeraters, etc. This factor can be attributed to the fall of the USSR.
Now, consider a "Balkanized" nation (as another poster defined it). With third world world nation X believing that it is better than Western nation Y, they stay happy with that thought. But then, the internet comes into play.
People now realize, that, hey, they got shafted when God was giving out all the goods in this world, and they want the newfound luxuries.
Now, this should inspire them to industrialize and such, but I have a different theory.
Considering that one percent of the world's population controls about 80% of the world's wealth, it doesn't seem that those under the scale of the social ladder will be recieving their fare share anytime soon. They might revert to unorthodox methods.
Revolutionary methods.
I theorize sometimes that this communications revolutions will lead to many social and political revolutions, much as the Industrial Revolution of the 19th century gave rise to worker's unions and worker's rights.
My only advice now would be to get out of the line of fire before the shit hits the fan, because the most privilaged people in the world are going to be the first to hit the wall once the revolution comes.
Now that's my two pfenigs worth
The Original Celebrated Curiously Strong GHOST (mentha lemures)
Disclaimer: India is too vast (and diverse) a country to comment upon in a general sense. The contrast is too much for many people to digest. If you come to one of the larger cities (like Bangalore), you see lots of Hoardings advertising popular Indian websites like rediff.com, sharekhan.com etc. Whereas if you go to some of the rural background, I wonder whether how many people will understand the word "Internet". In the larger cities there are plenty of "Cyber-Cafes" and most of the Internet usage is through these Cyber-Cafes. One interesting (social??) point in this regard is that in India because of the shared use of computers, the actual number of Internet users is much more than the number of Internet connections (1 cafe may have only 1 connection, but with 5-10 PCs connected behind a Proxy Server). On the social aspect: There are states in India which are rapidly progressing with respect to Internet usage (e.g. Andhra Pradesh with its IT crazy Chief Minister). I have recently read in the media abt the Internet being used to check the status of pensions etc in rural villages etc -- So that means that directly or indirectly the Internet is making life easier for the urban folks who were till now living a totally different life than in the big cities. Another issue worth a mention is that Email is a big hit considering the high cost of International telephony. What is different from other countries probably is the less number of Home PCs for net usage. The reasons for this can be: 1. Local calls are charged per 3mins in most cities -- This works out expensive. 2. I wouldn't say the ISP are the cheapest 3. Cost of a PC for an average Indian etc... .Another issue to be mentioned with respect to a line in the original /. posting "... actually starting an ISP in these places would be difficult technologically....". I don't think that (atleast in India) technology is the problem. The problem is more with licenses for ISPs, cost, other controls etc.
The reason why internet laws are not in place in this country is because it's people (or political advisors) don't know a shit about things involved. They might have a good AK-47 law in place, though. What else can u expect from a bunch of military men ruling the roost.
Anyway, aren't we going quite off-topic in this chain ;-) ------------------- "Tommorow never comes" - Vitalstatistix
This is an interesting position, since it seems to assert that copyright will eventually disappear because of the ease of copying. But copyright was created because of the ease of copying. Back in the old days before moveable type, there was no need for copyright because the effort involved in mass copying was prohibitive. Once you have the printing press, though, and can print a couple hundred copies of anything, it's a whole new ballgame.
It comes down to a question of whose rights are more important: producer or consumer? Do I, as a producer, have the right to control the use and distribution of what I produce? Or do you, as a consumer, have the right to do whatever you want with it, give copies to your friends, etc.? It's a balancing act, who gets how much control. Giving more rights to the consumer takes away rights from the producer, and vice versa. The only time when this is a non-issue is when the producer and consumer are synonymous (i.e. the open-source model).
As it stands now in most copyright law, and stood for software as well until the DMCA, is that the producer has the right to distribute, while the consumer has the right to do whatever he damn well pleases (fair use) as long as he doesn't violate the producer's right (e.g. by distributing copies without paying the producer). This, IMO, is the way to go. If I as a producer want to grant the consumer additional control and waive some of my own, I can use something like the GPL. The DCMA screwed things up because it put needless restrictions on fair use, throwing everything off balance.
The problem with copyright is that so many companies abuse it. This is not a flaw with the idea of copyright itself, but in how it is written in the law books, how the courts have interpreted those laws, and how companies tend to approach it. Any reform of copyright should attack those problems, but the central idea is still fundamentally sound.
Finally, the argument that copyright is not valid because it is not enforceable is not a good one. It is enforceable: "piracy"--a pretty ridiculous term, granted--is occasionally found out, especially the larger operations (Joe Blow, making a copy of The Matrix for his pal John Doe, is less likely to be caught). Arguing that there should be no copyright laws because law enforcement can't catch all offenders is like saying that there should be no laws against pyramid schemes because law enforcement can't catch all con men. It doesn't hold up.
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Zardoz has spoken!
Oper on the Nightstar
You gents who want to lead where we should follow
And teach us to stay out of crime and sin:
Our stomachs, like your platitudes, are hollow.
Give us some grub first, then you can begin!
-Bertholt Brecht, "What Keeps Mankind Alive?" from The Threepenny Opera, transl. by Michael Feingold (1989)
I think that says enough.
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Zardoz has spoken!
Oper on the Nightstar
Okay, I was a little confused by your wording. Still, there are some problems with this. One is that it implies that enforceability is required for legitimacy, which is not true. Try traffic law: is it possible to catch everybody who runs a red light? No. Does that mean that the laws against running red lights should be repealed? No.
Au contraire. It is not a right enumerated in the Constitution, but see what Amendment IX has to say about that. I have a right to receive proper remuneration for my effort. Writing is frickin' hard. Not everybody is Stephen King and can write ten dictionary-sized bestselling novels in a week. It takes time and effort, which were obviously not spent on another job (except possibly flipping burgers, or sticking price tags on merchandise at S-Mart)
But the master could have no basic right to them in the first place, because to do so would conflict with the basic human right to freedom. Humans have free will. Until someone codes a sentient AI, data does not. The slavery metaphor is not very apt.
I suppose we'll have to agree to disagree, since we're operating from different sets of axioms. I've been taking the traditional "Euclidian" route, you've been taking the "non-Euclidian" one. The two points of view can't be reconciled if they are based on conflicting initial assumptions, like the perennial argument of theism vs. atheism.
<impression voice="LaurenceFishburne">Show me.</impression> If you can trace this back to a set of initial assumptions I agree with, then you can show my own reasoning (and therefore my position) to be faulty.
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Zardoz has spoken!
Oper on the Nightstar
I think a very important question here is how can communications technology simultaneously provide a living and improve quality of life... I'm afraid I'm going down the slippery slope of neo-liberal economics, requiring everything to be viewed in terms of on economic exchange, but really, how is having access to the internet going to change the way people in bangladesh or nepal or botswana live?
obviously being able to communicate with family members who have gone abroad is one example cited in this forum. however, those families who can afford to send someone abroad are in the top 20% of those societies, not the impoverished masses.
the cellphone lady example I cited elsewhere utilized technology to provide a needed service that improved quality of life. she enables people to avoid having to spend the entire day walking between two remote villages to simply communicate. and she is compensated for providing this service. everyone wins.
going further, though, if we consider computers and telephony to be means of production, which we can conceivably make available to the impoverished in developing countries, what product can they produce? are we going to realize the Dilbert notion of Elbonia, contracting out coding to villages in tibet?
I ask this question in all seriousness. this sort of issue has come up before; a prominent senator in west virginia (I think it was byrd) got federal money for a program to teach coal miners (not a booming profession right now) to code in ADA. I believe the program was not very successful, not because coal miners are stupid (go see Matewan please), but because shifting gears like that tends to rip out your mental transmission...
but I digress...
again, my question is: how can the spread of computer and telephony technology into developing countries actually provide a sustainable livelihood for the forgotten four-fifths, the impoverished majority?
nathan
*urp!*
Excellent post!
As I noted in an earlier post, wireless may be a very powerful force in these areas, as it requires less of an infrastructure. of course, generally wireless is going to require WAPs (wired access points) if the users wish to communicate beyond, say, their village. however, going even further out on this limb, consider satellite communications....
this is really a very interesting topic, because these technologies move us away from the idea of control of populace by control of geography. i.e. cutting telecom lines restricts communication quite well in a country who relies heavily on landlines; a country built more on wireless is more versatile, especially if they have a direct wireless connection to an area outside of the local/national governments region of control (i.e. satelitte uplink).
this is not completely new, of course: consider efforts made by governments using radio broadcasts into "enemy territory", i.e. Radio Free . wireless is a liberational technology -- consider one of the first orders made by the nutso commander in Dr. Strangelove: all civilian radios are to be turned in, ostensibly to prevent the infusion of misinformation by enemy forces.... ah, those simple, early years of information warfare.
ramble ramble
nathan
*urp!*
I dont know about other third world countries, but in Papua New Guinea, there *is* internet access, and it *is* important. PNG is a developing country playing catch-up with the western world, and being able to communicate is an important factor. In many parts of the country people are too remote for telephones, or even elementary schools, but these areas are shrinking (slowly). There is a high demand in the country for people with training in technological fields, and for there to be these people there need to be technical schools...with computers and internet access. Since there is no such thing as long distance charges in the country, anyone with a phone line has local internet access. Granted most of the computers are ancient Macs, but they still work for email and basic websites. The internet is a noticeable factor in the development of PNG. If nothing else, it allows me to keep in contact with my family there, despite it taking 3 weeks for snail mail to arrive. *g*
Every country has it's elite class, with money to spare. If you located in a large city (for infrastructure), you might be able to sell access as a status symbol to those with money. You would have to import or train a workforce though, and religious laws could be a problem in some areas. Depends on what you define as third world too. Ethiopia is VERY poor, and you might not even be able to get the elite to buy access. Pakistan is VERY Muslim (At least so I hear. I may be wrong though, I hate to make generalizations about religion) and may have legal hurdles. India on the other hand, while often considered third world, already has a tech infrastructure. I Eastern Europe might be a good place to start, some infrastructure, some elites with money, and a desire to become part of the larger world. Eastern Europe might also have tech workers avaialable. Of course I have never been to any of these places, so I could be way off, but I have talked to people from most of them.
I don't need a million points of light, just two points of multi-mode fiber and a 10 Gig-E router.
However, there are a great number of benefits that an isolated, heavily impoverished community could reap from having access to an internet-connected PC. Envision a remote village, with no phones, electricty, etc. For a modest investment (probably While the same $10k could buy a lot of food & medicine, just think of the benefits you are giving the village. With the 'net, they now have instant access to all of the free resources available - libraries, telecommunications, financial services, etc. If someone is sick, they could easily communicate with a doctor to get advice or summon help. Classes could be taught remotely, allowing a single teacher to instruct children in several villages at once. They could set up thier own website to solicit aid directly, instead of having to rely on agencies which take their own cut first and/or are advancing their own agendas. They could sell their traditional art & handcrafts online, then use the procedes to buy their own food, medicine, farm equipment, etc. There are endless possibilities.
Remember the old saying: "Give a man a fish, you feed him for today. Teach a man to fish, you feed him for a lifetime." Having the computer would give them a tool to help them solve their other problems. It's not as direct or immediate as sending food (and dosn't replace that need), but it is probably the most cost-effective way to provide the basic infrastructure needed for self-sufficiency.
"The axiom 'An honest man has nothing to fear from the police'
Why is it that the proponents of "one nation under God" are so eager to get rid of "liberty and justice for all"?
After contemplating the possibility of integrating third world countries into the internet community, I have but one conclusion. This would either be the best or worst thing for these countries. I mean in a way that's kinda obvious, but no-one will ignore it if it happens. It's kinda like in "The Matrix" where they aren't ready to be unplugged. Countries such as these need to be slowly integrated rather than being thrust onto the Internet because that's what everyone else does. I say fix the social problems in these countries first. People who are considering this should think more about taking it one step at a time Neo out..
Well, yes... After they find it, they stop looking.
as far as access to the net is concerned, there are quite a few isp's that have been set up despite the government making every step in the set convoluted and difficult.
there have been attempts to filter content, and the government has tried to force isp's to do it, but fortunately they have not met with a great degree of success to date.
however, this is only the case for dial-up. dedicated links are extremely expensive and cable, dsl and fiber are not valid options. it seems that we have taken the first steps but have not managed to get much further... yet.
dealing with the "cultural friction" part of the question, people have run towards getting access. there are always the naysayers, but they have thankfully been largely ignored.
it isn't really about the analogy, it's about the nature of the arguments. I deserve X cause I put effort into it, Without X people have no incentive ..., The financial success that X has caused in this area justifies it. X will never go away because it's too founded in our society. People need X to keep them under control. blah blah blah. The similarities to slavery just happen to a cooincidence that people have tried to paint both as a property right with certain justifications that are just plain false. For all I know, there might be some compelling argument that justifies IP that has no coorlation to slavery. Physical property has good justification for it's existence that don't use these poor arguments, why should I let you impose intellectual-property on me without other compelling reason???
first off, I said it's not a basic right and then I said it's unenforcable - that's quite a different thing than saying it's not a basic right because it's unenforcable. Second, copyrights are not a basic right, it has nothing to do with whose rights are more important because when I copy something that you created - your rights are not being violated in any way. In fact, that attitude is rather arrogant. It's similar to saying that stealing slaves from the plantation and freeing them violates their masters basic right. You're assuming that copyrights are like some type of property right, I'm assuming they're not and acting from there. However, unlike yours - my assumption is founded.
you say that IP and copyrights are not such terrible things, but you should look at their foundation. Renember, slavery didn't start out to be that bad either. It was short term indentrued servitude, that was white and black, never inherited, and gave people an opportunity to own property and advance themselves, and if you didn't like slavery or the institution you didn't half to own slaves or you could be kind to the slaves that you had. It happened then, and it's happening now. Copyrights (and patents to a lesser extent) are on a collission course with the bill-of-rights. Every year they get harsher, every year you see new wrongs that result from them, and the problems that result from them will never go away until we adress the core issue. and that is - what is the nature of property and how do we justify it's existence. This is a very different question than what do I think I should be entitled to. If we don't learn to differentiate, history will repeat itself.
Ok, at the risk at not leaving it as "lets agree to disagree". Lets try this again. People have property rights even if no government exists at all, but they typically organize in the form of government to secure these rights. The foundation of property as a right derives from the fact that property has physical limits, that not everybody can use any property at will without conflicting on anothers ability to use it too. Therefore out of respect for human dignity the concept of private property and individual ownership has evolved. However, intellectual property is slightly different, it original foundation came a few centuries ago (after the great creativity of the renisance BTW) when the king of england promised to grant a monpoly on copying stories to publishers who promised not to print bad things about the monarchy. Later on in the US, it was recgonized that these were not natural law rights, but were allowed anyhow as a SHORT TERM incentive, whose justification was to promote sharing of artistic works to the eventuall public domain. Of course, at no time is the practice of putting effort into somthing a right to renumerated, rahter that is just an extension of natural law property rights of which controlling anothers copying behavior is certainly not. David
I disagree, property rights derive from the fact that not everybody can use something at the same time. People half to come up with rules of ownership to guarentte respect of individual dignity. Slavery failed on the individual dignity part, copyrights fail on the limited nature of property part. Besides, when you restrict me from copying even though it doesn't limit the information you have access to - it is then excercizing a limited form of control over me in the name of protecting your "profits" - that sounds very close to the path to slavery if anything. David
this is the whole point though, who said anything about international dissent, half our problems are being caused by US companies. Specifically MS, MPAA, and RIAA. All very heavy in to copyrights, and all very willing to act extremely unethically (perhaps violent) to uphold them. BTW, copyrights are definitely on the way out. When it comes to bogus property rights, they are taking the path that slavery did.
there is compelling reason because even though slavery and copyrights have nothing to do with each other in terms of human treatment, they are almost the exact same in terms of the arguments used to uphold them as a property right. Try it, give me an argument that's used to justify intellectual-property that wasn't also used to justify slave property.
I thought you might say somthing like that. What if you spent several years worth of income importing a slave to the states, and spend 10 years training them to opperate various aspects of your plantation. BZZTT. sorry, doesn't give you the right. NEXT...
Compared to these obstacles, the cultural issues you mention seem like a minor issue, at least until the economics raise the possibility of actually serving the masses; and by then the changed economics will almost certainly have changed the cultural assumptions anyway.
In Colombia, much like other South American countries, the Internet has been embraced pretty widely by many different groups. Many portals are being developed solely for the Latin American audience, multiple publications have gone all out to post their magazines/newspapers on the net with pretty successful results, and companies are trying be part of e-commerce. The Internet is very popular throughout the high and middle classes, but is still to engulf the lower working class. The government has not involved itself into trying to legislate the net, to the extent that the ELN and FARC (two Colombian guerrilla groups) have their own web sites. A bigger question is what will be the impact of the internet's e-commerce on such developing countries. Will Latin American countries step up and make part of the new internetised global economy and flourish, or will they be crushed by larger multinationals.
In terms of overall Internet connectivity, Kazakhstan is ranked along with countries like Burma and some African countries, at the very bottom of the list. What's more, the government is very interested in NOT allowing people free access to the Internet and all the un-censored information that's on it. In particular the government is concerned with opposition sites, like Eurasia.org, based in neiboring Russia and at one point ordered the few tightly controlled ISPs to block requests for the eurasia.org.ru domain. And recently, again in an article on Eurasia.org, I found that the Kazakhstani government is sending a delegation to Burma to learn from Burmese experience of cencoring internet access with the presumed intent of implementing similar techniques in Kazakhstan.
Now, when I talk about Kazakhstani government, I usually mean the president, Nursultan Nazarbayev, who has a long history of rigging election, making adjustments to the constitution that will allow him to remain president for life, blocking the parliament from making changes in the constitution. He is also the 9th richest man in the world, and that in a country with rapidly decreasing population and GNP, not to mension the pitiful standard of living. Human rights activists are not happy with Kazakhstan, that's for sure.
What all of this translates into, is the fact that someone like me, a 24 year old man that doesn't come from a rich Kazakhstani family, first accesses the internet at the age of 23. (And I consider myself a computer geek, think about non-geeks in contrast). It also majority of people who have the internet access come from rich families, who in most cases are to some extent involved in the not very ethical accusition of wealth, and are not interested in openness of the opinion. That's why they seem to spend most of their time in chat rooms talking about sex...(my personal observation, from trying to find a good discussion board or chat room to talk with my former compatriots about Kazakhtani politics)
I'm a recent immigrant to the US from Kazakhstan (came here 1 year ago) and my parents and little brother are still there. I have a little of my own and my wife's writings on my web site about Kazakhstan, however, it's only marginally related to the topic at hand.
Anyway, now you know a little about Kazakhstan, even if you can't yet spell its name.
www
I'm from Ecuador, a 3rd world country... and if is true that the technology is lower over there, current generations get more used to it... and every time there is more people involved with this things. Internet access is one case... there are several ISPs and the market is growing with big steps. Although, this is a preferencial service to the middle and high class. It hasn't become yet a necesity of the people who in the majority has needs of more basic stuff like shelter or food.
Giving Internet access to people in Third World countries would seem to be an instance of putting the cart before the horse. What use is the Internet to people who can't read? Let's help them stabilize their economies and learn to read, write, and think before we teach them to surf.
Having internet access could definitely be a means for people to in impoverished countries to take care of those *other* problems. While owning a computer may be an unbelievable extragance for an individual or family, it could be quite feasible for a community. Take a group of alpaca herders in the Andes. They sell alpaca rugs to buyers from Cuzco for a pittance (especially from the alpaca's point of view), who sells them to another buyer in Lima, who sells them to someone in New York or Miami, who sells them to a retailer. Give them a web page and they can take orders from around the globe. Now this village in the Andes is the home of Urubamba.com, your one stop shopping headquarters for alpaca rugs. Bye the way, now they can quit growing coca. Picture a similar scenario for African woodcarvers making exquisite ebony figurines for sale to cruise ship tourists. What they sell for $5 ends up for $150 in Pier1 Imports. An over simplification, I know, but this is how e-commerce works.
If I have seen farther than other men it is because I have stood on the shoulders of giants.
-Isaac Newton
If I have made more money than other men it is because I have stood on the shoulders of giants, while my legal team imprisoned and castrated them.
-Bill (last name omitted out of fear)
How about the computer's ability to rapidly retrieve information on finding clean water, teaching basic health care, efficient means of raising/finding foodstuffs...wouldn't such information mean millions would live, instead of die? How about making contact with outsiders that can help? How about creating connections with other businesses? An internet connection brings a huge library to them, it provides connections with people who can inform, help or trade.
For the price of a computer, you can feed people.
With a computer/internet, they can learn to feed themselves.
Can we get a "-1 Wrong" moderation option?
We are poorly placed to understand the transformation going on in the third world countries. The new media of Internet makes little sense when it is out of financial reach for individual. To have access to the Internet is by no mean an impossible task, no matter where an individual is. In third world countries,priority is often placed on day to day life, as it should be. Since surfers across the world are becoming more web-savy, they will look to design as the first indication of the worth of visit of a third world web site. The Internet is before all a statement of individual. It is individualistic. One person, in front of one screen. One mouse to surf. Where is the community? The community is everywhere and has no shape. Further, social changes, as I pressume the post targeted China, will not happen unless dissatisfaction rises. While we have been striving for democracy, chinese social problems have a totaly different value system. The political system does not matter as much. The pratical, day-to-day is what matters most. And the attitude towards change is different. Chinese are patient. They will wait until the time is right. They see our acceleration as something that will pass. They are a culture that has lasted for thousand of years. Social changes are more likely for our own nation. We are more axed for rapid change, and are currently in economic and social transformation. And Internet is much more likely to be available to the average citizen. In fact the instant visibility of the Internet is both a blessing and a curse. Never has the potential for decentralized governement being so strong. Through technology, the articulation of local needs can be effectively heard.
Taking on space
Check out this article on CNN, 03/09/2000: http://cnn.com/2000/TECH/computing/03/06/china.mp3 .idg/index.html/
..while China is a prominent global power, certainly not a 3rd-world country, this article highlights the extent to which centralized state apparatus' (apparati?), specifically those of fundamentalist states, will be able to control the content provided to its people. While many 3rd world countries struggle for democracy, many are ruled by regimes whose interests are put in danger when a vast amount of information is available, suggesting alternatives to the current status quo..
.. sadly, most of Africa is further from any consistent government).
it will be interesting to see which states choose to regulate Internet access, and to what extent. though regulation is nothing 'new' (Putin's recent demand that ISP's in Russia feed all their content through black boxes - allowing Russian intelligence total access - or be sanctioned), smaller 3rd world governments might succeed in creating a more tightly-controlled system due to those nations' relatively tiny geographic size, or the concentration of technology in a few small, urban area (i'm thinking of several of the smaller splinters of the former Soviet Union, as well as the Central American states and the Pacific Rim
Regulation creates jobs, as well.. as Houston InterWeb Design in the article above proves. If there is money to be made in censorship, money will be made. Not to mention the irony of the positions of power created, akin to the Chief of the Firemen in Fahrenheit 451.. your job, regulation, keeps you in constant contact with what you can regulate, and affords you privileges, access to that information, that others can't legally have..
Technology in that sense can be seen to be facilitating the maintenance of fundamentalist regimes, instead of the West's much-articulated hope that access to technology will break down barriers... i actually think that the latter will one day occur. But in the meantime, there's money to be made in censorship..
Ummm, Intel is giving free computers to all their employees, and that includes the many Intel employees who live in other countries.
Although when I looked it up, it was hosted by netnation (Silicone Valley), There is an Ethiopean website: http://www.ethiopiaonline.net You can find out a lot about Ethiopean Technology from there.
I think it would depend on who has the access control. If the younger crowd gets relativly unfettered access, it would have a major impact on the social structure and culture of a third-world country. Kids learn faster, and just having billions of virtual carrots dangling just out of reach on the other side of the screen would drive them towards getting their share of the carrot patch. If the older crowd gets control of access, then there will be roadblocks on the road to riches. Change is probably the most frightening thing to deal with, especially in places where death visits far too often. If the governments gain control of access, then we'll have the same iron-fisted control of what they see. Censorship will rule.
"First things first, but not necessarily in that order."
- Doctor Who
Just about anywhere in the world, Technology is for the rich. You can get Internet access in Brazzaville, Congo (arguably one of the least developed nations in the world), but you have to pay a good price for it.
WWW.Malawi.Net will be your ISP for a fair price, assuming you can get the national phone company to install a wire to your house! (my mother-in-law is experiencing this right now...)
Libreville and Port Gentil, Gabon both have several ISP's, but some indexes place Libreville in the top three most expensive cities in the world, so what's a few more bucks?
That is perfectly true *IF* you believe that a slave is in fact property. Slavery was abolished with the shift in paradigm: that people cannot be owned (i.e. they cannot be property). Something most of us in the world now acknowledge as basic human rights. I believe that people do have a right to work hard, and invest their resources to an end, and be appropriately compensated so long as it does not infringe on the rights of others to mutually to do the same. The issue of slavery is to be looked upon as an issue of *human rights* not *property rights*. You're mixing your paradigms in your analogy, my friend.
This is typically of two things, nerds with a very narrow focus on what is important in life, and secondly an incredible belief in change through technology. The majority of people living in 3rd world countries, want to fulfill the basic human needs. Food, Security, shelter, surviving yet another day. How removed from the real world can one be, when one is worried about spreading the Internet to these countries? Should the money not be spent to try to make (at least small) improvements for the majority rather than putting a computer or 10 in a village somewhere. Give them clean water, basic healthcare, minimum foodstuffs, that would mean millions would live, instead of die. Internet? Computers?.... I dont think so. For the price of a computer, you could feed a lot of ppl for a long time.
With an 8086 and a floppy disk you get a beautiful dumb terminal. Imagine how many people could benefit if all those old, mostly-dead computers could be hooked up with a modem (or for places without modem access, some sort of cheap ham radio packet network or other cheap networking). Anyone could get email and use lynx for web browsing.
I guess the biggest problem is the infrastructure though... if there are no land lines for phones in everyone's living space (or even no electricity!) it's hard to have any sort of computer stuff. Perhaps a cluster of dumb terminals in the center of a community? You can run lots of dumb terminals pretty well off of a single reasonably-fast modem...
-- Erich
Slashdot reader since 1997
I don't know about you, but if I lived in a third world country, I would be much more concerned about feeding my family, finding work, and dealing with oppressive governments than with finding internet access.
There is simply no need for the Internet in these countries yet. First we should concentrate on helping these other countries "catch up" to our ecomonmic and social prosperity before we go telling them that the Internet will solve all their problems!
India has the one of fastest growing software tech industries in the world (possibly the fastest right now).
There's a whole lotta people living in India, it doesn't take a large fraction of them to be technically competent, on the net, or have degrees in astrophysics before there's a lot of people who do all those things. And they have their own space program (which is more than can be said of my own country, despite the fact we have scads of space industry).
We have to hire whole bunches of Indian HW and SW engineers, 'cos the Indian Unis are churning them out by the bucket load, and we can't afford the ones that are available in blighty.
-- At rest in the information super layby.
Ah yes, the French and their Lingua Paranoia...
Here in the US we're working to outlaw the use of the words sushi, pasta, canapes and every word that ends in '-tion'. The English language is on the verge of extinction (whoops)
**>>BELCH
Most religious leaders (more like pigs) see the internet as the work of the devil -- a source of pornographic materials.
What they fear, of course, is not the porno. They're probably eating that up quicker than the rest of you. It's the uncontrollably broad perspective that is immediately available on the 'net which would (will) threaten their hold on the minds of citizens, and threaten their ability to manipulate people with their fearsome admonitions.
ALL religions abhor freedom of information, for their 'truths' very quickly sound inane in the company of saner views.
Good luck to your friends back home!
**>>BELCH
Folks,
The question in regards to Internet access outside of North America should be asked in this term--can even middle-class people in foreign countries even AFFORD to have Internet access?
We in the USA and Canada are very lucky, because for calling people 12 miles (20 kilometers) or less away, we are not billed by the minute. (Note: the distance may depend on your local telephone provider). Because local calls aren't billed beyond your normal monthly phone bill, this encourages rapid development of computer connections over standard telephone lines, and of course this has resulted in VERY rapid development of Internet access that costs for unlimited usage anywhere from US$21.95 per month all the way down to free! Also, in the USA we can in many parts of the country get broadband ADSL and cable modem access for between $40 and $50 per month unlimited usage.
Most of the world have state monopolies running their telephone systems (the PTT model), and they charge even by the minute for local calls. Because of the "always on" necessity of accessing the World Wide Web, this means that even if your POP is very close you still pay the equivalent of two to four US cents per minute, and when you multiply that by several hours, no wonder why Europe and Japan haven't taken to the Internet like North American users have.
What I find interesting is that Europeans and Japanese are essentially using short time access to the Internet to primarily exchange text messages via cellular phones, essentially reducing the Internet to its pre-World Wide Web stage. Even the advent of "G3" cellular phones with its 384 Kbps bidirectional access in the next few years is not going to improve things in Europe and Japan as they are still forced to pay per minute charges for air time.
Hopefully, with Europe and Japan now warming up to the idea of flat-rate local telephone calls, this may spur development of the Internet to US levels.
Raymond in Mountain View, CA
Abraham Maslow, see this page for a description of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
www.grameen.org, Grameen Bank
wlink.com.np, an affordable ISP in Nepal
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/6.01/barlow.htm l, a Wired article by John Perry Barlow
WWJD for a Klondike Bar?
if people are ignorant of the world around them or if they just ignore it. In America there are few people alive that remember a time of true disparity. We have individuals in the country that have personal bank accounts that are larger than the GNP of some countries. Even poor people in this country are more prosperous than the middle-class of several countries. People living on welfare aren't forced to drink from the same water they forced to shit in. The pompousness bred by this country makes me sick at times, people are dying from the common cold and we're wondering how they can get internet access. Every generation since those born in the 1940s has known a level of prosperity never seen before in the history of human civilization and they let this prosperity cloud their thought processes and colour their opinion of the rest of the world.
Besides the fact that most people on the planet have absolutely no use for the internet, how would they use it if they could? The internet is predominantly English, ASCII isn't exactly designed for non-roman character sets. Don't mention Unicode please, until every web page in the world is written with Unicode rather than ASCII it is a moot point. There is the technological language barrier and a literacy barrier, many people in the world have no formal education so they don't even read their native language well if at all. How in the hell are these people supposed to read a webpage? I say if you're going to give anything to poor nations to benefit them how about fresh drinking water and some healthcare, efficient housing and a way to be self sufficient wouldn't hurt either.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
if people are ignorant of the world around them or if they just ignore it. In America there are few people alive that remember a time of true disparity. We have individuals in the country that have personal bank accounts that are larger than the GNP of some countries. Even poor people in this country are more prosperous than the middle-class of several countries. People living on welfare aren't forced to drink from the same water they forced to shit in. The pompousness bred by this country makes me sick at times, people are dying from the common cold and we're wondering how they can get internet access. Every generation since those born in the 1940s has known a level of prosperity never seen before in the history of human civilization and they let this prosperity cloud their thought processes and colour their opinion of the rest of the world.
Besides the fact that most people on the planet have absolutely no use for the internet, how would they use it if they could? The internet is predominantly English, ASCII isn't exactly designed for non-roman character sets. Don't mention Unicode please, until every web page in the world is written with Unicode rather than ASCII it is a moot point. There is the technological language barrier and a literacy barrier, many people in the world have no formal education so they don't even read their native language well if at all. How in the hell are these people supposed to read a webpage? I say if you're going to give anything to poor nations to benefit them how about fresh drinking water and some healthcare, efficient housing and a way to be self sufficient wouldn't hurt either.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
There are parts of this country that according to the US State Department qualify as 3rd world nations due to the living conditions there. These areas include man Native American Reservations and rancharieas, the rural south, the Apilacians, and areas along the northern midwest.
/. means we are members of a more privlaged class. We have the resources that allow us to have computers and internet access. There are people in this country who don't have these sorts of things.
Although many of these areas do in fact have access to the internet, the people don't. There are towns here in California that only have power for certain parts of the day. Once it reaches 8pm the lights go out. Not too conducive to late night coding runs and killer uptimes if you ask me.
By the very fact that we are able to post here on
Before we set off on thinking about how we are going to wire the Outback of Australia for high speed internet access, it would probably serve us well to figure out how we are going to get propper electricity and running water to areas of our own country.
----
"War doesn't determine who's right, just who's left"
"War doesn't determine who's right, just who's left"
Steven Wright
I heard this story when I was a little boy. There was a starvation in ancient China. One day, the king went out of the palace to take a look, and he met farmers who are so thin and pale. He asked the following government officers, "Why are these people so unhealthy?" One officer told him, because they don't have rice to eat. The king didn't understand and ask, "why don't they eat meat instead?"
Yes, freedom of speech is important. Yes, have to right to get information is important. But before we can improve most people's living standard in the third world, concerning whether they have or what they have on internet access is simply asking what kind of 16oz steak they are eating.
Unless you can show me how internet access can improve their living standard significantly, I won't bother. We better to change their governments, not giving them cheap and good internet access while most people don't even have calculators.
A sig is redundant.
On the cultural side, pioneer companies are discovering a scary trait in Brazilians: we don't trust the Internet enough to buy there!
I'll not address the issue of whether those fears are founded or not - I'm not informed enough to comment.
What I will say is... It doesn't matter! If customers find what they want on the Internet, and then buy it, it doesn't matter that they did the actual transaction the old-fashioned way, with real rather than virtual cash. It's still profitable!
Offline, the yellow pages and free "advertizer" newspapers work the same way. They're not used like a catalog, to buy directly; rather, they're used to locate providers of products and services. Yet, they are profitable. They make money for the publishers who print the papers and sell the ads. They also make money for the advertizers who buy the ads, because they bring in paying customers they would not otherwise have.
I know the Christmas Island registry gives free domain names to nationals. (Of course, it's still first-come first-served for choosing names).
11.0010010000111111011010101000100010000101101000
This is true in the 'developed' world too.
11.0010010000111111011010101000100010000101101000
The fact that this question would or could even be asked shows the fundamental lack of understanding and knowledge of the conditions of most of the rest of the world. In particular, US citizens have such a high standard of living that they forget that most of the third world does not have reliable access to fresh clean drinking water, to nutrient rich food supplies, or to vaccines for Polio and other diseases considered 'cured' in the more wealthy nations.
This doesn't even get us started, but if we did we would arrive at the fact that many of the telephone systems in these countries are unreliable, cycling on and off at night, or on an hourly basis.
Do I need to go on? How would access to medicine, food and water effect social change? Moreover, what social change would that represent in the wealthy nations who say things like 'oh, those poor people don't have the Internet.'
John
Of course not, they're pining for the fjords!
One of the (interesting!) comments below is that in Nepal, there are, besides some surprizing dial-up access points, storefronts where email can be used for USD.30 / message.
... someone is going to make a billion or twelve when they create the McDonalds of Internet service. Cheap, high turnover, standard prices, consistent, no-frills, ubiquitous, requires no huge investment from customer, simple but popular offerings (browse, mail, print). Actually, let's hope it's at least the Subway of Internet service, since that would perhaps be healthier ;)
Another one of the comments points out that only two African countries have more than a 1% penetration.
Combine those ideas
Also, micro-entreprenuers is all it would really take to, say, serve e-mail to a neighborhood.
timothy
p.s. Yes, I read a lot of Horatio Alger, so that particular flame you can hold back;)
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
Westerners believe that these countries are backwards for the wrong reasons and tossing technology their way is the solution. Remember how the Green Revolution was supposed to end world hunger? How about all that aid that can never get through because some military force destroys it?
The reasons are so complex and believe me, having the net is not going to solve their problems anytime soon! Personally there is nothing sillier than to expect farm equipment that works here to work over there. If it breaks down, who on earth is going to fix it (providing that the farmer can AFFORD to fix it)
I'm sure an internet connection is the last thing people who are oppressed or starving are pining for
Check out Tonic, the register for the
Here is the appropriate link, http://www.salon.com/books/it/1999/12/06/indian/in dex.html Technical Sutra. I don't know what happened to it in the above post.
All the creatures will die, And all the things will be broken. That's the law of samurai. (Jubai, 1605)
Add to government intervention a third reason that it is difficult to set up ISPs in some countries, government corruption. In other words, the need to pay the proper bribes. In some countries in the world paying gratuties to government officials in order to do just about anything is just part of the cost of doing business.
All the creatures will die, And all the things will be broken. That's the law of samurai. (Jubai, 1605)
Actually, there was an excellent NPR Morning Edition story several weeks ago about one of these projects (Grameen was referenced, though I don't know if it actually funded it). The project discussed was setting up local email providers in remote 3rd world villages so residents could contact their families members who had taken jobs working abroad. They explained how they could send an email for less than the cost of a one minute phone call, and that it had become the main communication method used by these seperated families.
It makes sense, since email is fast, reliable, and you don't have to coordinate when the other party will be available. Most of the family members working abroad were themselves working in developing countries where phone service was unreliable and/or expensive.
I know friends that need to make trips to Africa for work, and their main connection with the US while there is via email.
Work for Change & GET PAID!
You must understand that a country being poor does not automatically make all, or even most of its citizens poor. It's a lot more complicated than that, but Brazil has some tens of millions of Internet users and, of course, a bigger number of computer users. Call it perverse, unfair, whatever you like, but while there are homeless people hungry on the streets, almost everybody I know here has money to buy computers and Internet access.
On the financial side, millions of dollars are being invested in Internet businesses of all kinds, and it's been forecast that it will create 300 new jobs per working day for the remaining of the year in Brazil. So, it's a big economic boost.
On the cultural side, pioneer companies are discovering a scary trait in Brazilians: we don't trust the Internet enough to buy there! Maybe that comes from a few decades being screwed by big business like banks, health, credit card, etc. The fact is most Brazilians use the net to shop around, than go to the stores themselves to phisically buy the product. The biggest use of the net here is, by far, communicating. Chat rooms, e-mail lists, discussion sites are all blossoming.
On the social side, I see the greatest risks. Although the government has been very supporting, up to the point of legislating mandatory web publishing of public accounting records, the Brazilian people are not used to fight for their rights - it's a new democracy after all, just a little over a decade old. It does happen, but it feels like a new game where you don't yet know the rules. Also, we don't have American's enthusiasm for litigation. All that means that the same tools that can be used to promote freedom of speach and freedom in general can be used to lock people away from inconvenient content. This is not done by the Government, mind you, but by big business. For instance, when I try to access some American sites, they resolve my IP as coming from Brazil and dump me on a "Brazilian version" of the site which has different content from the original site. They clame this is localization, but it smells like censorship. The problem is the government does nothing to regulate this kind of actions and the people are not used to do that by themselves.
Finally, pornography. Sadly, this country exports pornography and sex in general. Again, this is the effect of an absent Government. The vast majority of the people is quite moral, maybe overly moral, but that doesn't stop tourists coming to Rio because it's not too hard to find cheap teen hookers. On the Internet, however, is where we can see most of the Government's actions against this. There's a special federal police bureau equipped and trained to deal with illegal Internet pornography, especially kid porn, and it's been quite effective. The bad news is that I believe this is driven by a lobby seeking to restrain some of the net's freedom. Nobody can afford to be publicly against efforts made to "shield" children from porn, and this is being used to create strong public support for some degree of censorship.
Overall I think the Internet has been and will be highly benefitial to the country, but we will need to mature into a wiser society to avoid falling into some of the traps.
There seems to be a lot of posts about the "third world" as a group. One small but insurmountable problem is that they aren't a homogeneous group at.
While I agree that most of the third world countries recently freed from colonial rule are working really hard to make material gains, this is not universally true.
May cultures simply don't value a large bank account the way us westerners do; or their culture has ways of looking at the world that preclude the U.S. "protestant work ethic." Some instances that come to mind are Nepal and some Pacific Islanders.
Nepal has not been colonialized (as a matter of fact, they stopped the British army in their tracks and were given their own country a brief time later by treaty. This was also the start of Gurkha employment my the UK...), but they are still a third world country (second poorest). I believe this is due to a combination of a little goverment and a lot culture. Although the goverment is rather opressive on some topics (religion), the main reason for Nepal's lack of income is the value officials put on teaching their culture to the exclusion of others. (Also note there is already a *thin* internet presence in Nepal, but I believe it's not nearly as important to change as the Gurkha returning after service with the brits).
On some Pacific Islands, there are very stable cultures in place that, although the whole island doesn't make as much money as an average American home, feeds (with locally grown crops and chickens) everyone, and makes most people there happy.
Regardless of the amount of information you pump into these cultures, it's unlikely they're going to change [for the better].
Now, I think you are on the mark for places like South America where we (the US) have suppressed their economies as a side effect of keeping Europe out during the last century. May countries (such as Brazil) are put into a place where they try to play catchup by the same means the US used to establish itself as a world power, but are facing resistance from enviromentalist who think having a stable biosphere is a good thing [sic].
I'm all for putting internet points of presence in every corner of the globe, but we must be realistic about what it will mean to different peoples, and what affect it will have on their cultures.
"One man can change the world with a bullet in the right place."
- Mick Travis, "If..."
Marc Steigler's book EarthWeb mentions this issue. He points out that free and easy access to information undermines governmental attempts to control public opinion. There are a couple of web sites related to the book. The first http://www.skyhunter.com/earthweb/ has information about the author's related activities and links to other sites. The other one belongs to the publisher, Baen Books and contains several sample chapters.
The net will not be what we demand, but what we make it. Build it well.
My friends just returned from a trip to Kenya. Much to my surprise I was IM'd by one of them while they were there, despite the 8 hour time difference. His host family (where he stayed) had full internet access and used AOL Instant Messenger. This is somewhat anecdotal evidence, but I have also corresponded with people using a computing center in Kenya. I would not venture that access is widespread, but at least in Nairobi there are ISPs.
"In individuals, insanity is rare, but in groups, parties, nations, and epochs it is the rule." -Nietzsche
Most of the world that is not yet on the Internet is balkanized. Balkanization is what happens when one country says "stuff that comes from our country is better than stuff that comes from any other" or "We're a better people because we were born here or our grandparents were born over there" and such like that. Like the Balkans, the constantly warrior superpatriot morons.
The countries that are keeping the Internet out right now are countries keeping it out not so much because of the freedom of speech or information issue (though that is a factor) but mostly because they don't want people to use it and say "Wow, they invented this in the USA and the majority of the sites on here are hosted in the USA, the USA must be a really neat place!". Moreover, they don't want people to see that great inventions like the Internet are the result of capitalism. Look at a list of the countries in which accessing the Internet is punishable by death or imprisonment. They're all either communist or socialist. Yes, they preach that everyone should share everything, but behind that sermon is a big country daddy deciding what the kids of the country are big enough to handle, and he guesses it isn't the Internet because of the capitalism issue...
Esperandi
Studies show the rich consistently outearn the poor.
I wish everyone commenting on this thread had read your post... they seem to all believe that unless we bail people out, they'll never survive and get net access on their own. El Salvador is obviously a proof that the bleeding hearts who want to hand everything to people on a silver platter are dead wrong.
Esperandi
Don't worry about the tariffs, if the textiles in El Salvador are of quality, I am certain there are other buyers and that the United States is missing out on the textiles as much as El Salvador is missing out on the income.
short question...
Do you believe that if the people tear down land lines to use the copper and sacrifice the mass communication offered by the Internet carried over the lines that they still deserve Internet access?
Esperandi
No, everyone *COULD* generally benefit from the free availability of information. As i read the comments on this thread one this is abundantly clear. Everyone believes that the people in third world countries just magically appeared there 10 years ago or so and they've been struggling like mad to advance as societies. This isn't true. They've languished in the same ridiculous poverty level for centuries of their own free will and volition. If you sat someone down, told them in their native tongue that they could use this thing to get better crop yields, learn how to irrigate, learn how to heal the sick, and all that, the person would get up, walk away, and go back to banging clothes on a rock. They're not poor because someone is holding them down, they're down because they're apathetic about advancing. Everyone started out in the same place on earth, some people moved here, some moved there. They scattered all over and clumped in tribes and groups. Those groups in the third world are the groups that had no interest in improving their lives, why should anyone break their backs to hold them up? The only thing you could possibly do is breed in them a new kind of dependance (they've already stopped trying to fight nature and grow food, they just wait for care packages from the UN).
Esperandi
I happened to have lived in Indonesia for 10 years (just moved 2.5 years ago), which to my knowledge is still considered a third world country. When I moved there, in 1990, there were no ISPs and most of the country had never heard of a thing called the internet. Most of the businesses and small sections of the government had some kind of connection, but it all was very limited. The government wasn't too enthusiastic about the net since it posed a problem of uncensored materials entering the country (the Wall Street Journal used to arrive with stories about Irian Jaya and the conflicts there blackened by permanent marker). When I finally got hooked up at home by the first ISP in Indonesia, in 1994/5, things were starting to take a turn for the better. For instance, I happened to notice that an ISDN service was offered along with other higher bandwidth services. By the time I left, in 1997, you could almost browse the web on a Sunday morning at a bearable (alas modem) speed. More ISPs had sprung up to accompany Radnet (website: http://www.rad.net.id) and more and more people were being connected. Most of these people were expatriats, however, who had the money for a computer and could pay for the luxury of internet access. The problem with third world countries, however, is not hooking people up to the net (even though the phone lines tend to be incredibly bad), but getting enough people that have computers to sign up (since the cost of computers is about double of that here in Silicon Valley). Anyways, that's just my 2 cents.
Some psychologist (I forget the name, somebody please reply with the name and/or links to info) a couple of years ago came up with something he called the triangle of needs (or something like that). The gist of it is that it's impossible to address higher-order thinking until several needs are satisfied, and it's not just the material needs. He theorized that high-order thinking that we would like to say the Internet encourages can only happen after you've got physical and emotional security. My question is, can these people even address this intellectually? Many of these countries have seen horrible wars, and I would theorize that the people are not emotionally ready to address this. Or am I completely off base?
"The romance of Silicon Valley was about money - excuse me, about changing the world, one million dollars at a time."
Visit
How is Domain Name registration handled in coutries like Tonga where the top level domain extension is sold commercially? Do citizens of Tonga have any special privaleges regarding registering for this name, or are they just as likely to get a name as an American?
Use my userscript to add story images to Slashdot. There's no going back.
This is a good topic with the recent Intel/Ford/etc announcements. What if we could convince these large corporations to also give computers to underdeveloped nations? Education is key too. What good is a computer is you've never used one, of perhaps never seen one? Giving to employees is nice, but this could be the ultimate act of good will.
Don't want to pay Lars? Sue him!
But the Internet is not without its benefits, Mnashtra has concluded: "But then, it has brought us many pictures of most gloriously naked women with tremendously big kayountas", he adds, smiling wryly, "so it is not all so bad."
-- WhiskyJack
In 1996 I was at the Jinan University getting accupuncture at the hospital (details). The head of the accupuncture department (married to one of the doctors) explained to me that all of their internet access went through a a filtering center. This would keep people from some of the subversive sites.
As we all know, filtering is not totally effective.
In a country where the news media is controlled by the government, the internet will people to access non-government approved information.
Those government will lose control, and it will have to adapt to that.
Fight Spammers!
I remember reading an excellent article on the subject in Wired a couple of years ago, archived at http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/6.01/barlow.htm l?topic=&topic_set= h tml 0 7/o/qid=952621680/sr=8-1/026-5273086-090 7466 )
In looking for that, I came across this older article as well:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/2.06/africa.
The subject reminds me of reading Molesworth's comments about TV (Who is Molesworth? Read this to find out... http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/01411824
I am not here 2 just defend my country. there r a lot of problems. but there r some things that have progressed, and i thought u should know them: 1) education is really neglected. but plzz remember that even then, India has more graduates than the US or any country except China will ever have. but yes, a lot needs 2 b done. 2)bureacracy has been toned down somewhat in recent years. and if u have a problem there is always the way of greasing hands. its illegal, but it sure opens more doors than any u can imagine. 3)the rupee is already partly convertible. if u have a problem with that, then u should know that 1 of the reasons the indian economy didnt slump in the sounth-asian economic crisis was that the rupee was not fully convertible. i think everybody has a right 2 keep some sort of defences.. 4)to tell the truth, the killings that uc in the news is not the whole truth. india has the second largest population of muslims in the world, and 99.999% of them r the brothers and sisters of us hndus. and anyway, my religion never taught us 2 kill people just bcause of relegion, fr we think everybody has the right 2 his own god. those who say different r ignorant fools, and in any society there r always fools. and may i point 2 u that there was a thing called the crusade launched by the cristians not so long ago.... and how many towns and cities were plundered. let him throw the frst stone who has never sinned. understood? 5)corruption has 2 b tackled, but its very hard. and i doubt whether anybody will b succesful in tackling it. but it sure is real baddd.
First, how are many (most?) of the people in these countries going to be able to afford computers? If I had to choose between feeding my family or buying a computer, the choice would be rather obvious. Of course, the governments over there could provide a few computers here and there, but even that would have the potential to cause financial stress. Speaking of the governments, would they want their citizens to have access to this kind of technology? It would probably help them develop quicker as a nation, but as with almost any government, censorship issues arise.
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I pledge allegiance to the flag...
of the Corporate States of America...
Regardless of the moral and social implications of the net, it is the economic factors that they must consider. If a country does not embrace the web and it's emmence possibilities for commerce, it will be in such a deep economic hole compared the the rest of the world that it will be very difficult to recover. -
Good, Bad... I'm the guy with the gun. -Ash
While financial barriers and the desire of local governments to control informations are obstacles to the widespread availabiltity of the internet; most people in the world will enthusiastically embrace it. A friend of mine travelled in Southeast Asia a few years ago and he recounted stories of going into a mud hut and finding computers there, it was an internet cafe. The only way for internet use to become a part of the culture is exposure to it. I heard that France had a widespread e-mail system since the early eighties. Perhaops there were questions whether the average american could accept such a technology.
Less-developed countries are adopting the same approach to computing and the internet that they have applied to other expensive information wave technologies: they pool community resources and install them as public services.
In Colombia, Ecuador and Venezuela (and probably other Latin American countries), it is common to see phone centers for making long distance calls: room full of small booths, with on-site operators to connect the calls, which are paid for at the time of the call. (An odd side effect of the phones centers is that in certain Latino/Hispanic communities in the US, you still see these phone centers, even though people may have phones at home; they're used to them, and the aggregate billing rates are cheaper).
Not everyone has phones in these countries not necessarily because the individuals can't afford them, but because it may be too cost prohibitive for the state phone company to install the lines. The same applies to Internet: it's cheaper to aggregate the service in order to reduce costs per capita.
Now these phone centers are playing host to Internet services as well, used to communicate with relatives in other countries as well as intra-country. And since, as so many Americans seeme to forget, even developing countries all have wealthy and technologically advanced citizens, they are applying the technologies as suits their culture. These are the people, whatever their politics or precarious position at the top of the heap, that lead the advancement into new technologies. It is also common in tourist areas to find Internet cafes, usually run by First Worlders of the broadest definition.
As odd as it sounds, an advantage to being an underdeveloped country is that a nation can skip the outdated interval technologies and jump straight to the latest. They can, for example, skip land lines, POTS, hard wires. The move to cellular phones in Ecuador and Colombia, for example, has leaped in such ways as to help circumvent the irregular and inconsistent land-line services. In parts of Latin America (which is largely my only area of experience) it has been tradition for radio stations to send out personal messages to listeners in their broadcast area. Not "Feliz Cumpleaños" but "Pedro, please meet us on Tuesday in Riobamba" or "Maria, your sister is sick. Could you come to take care of her for a few days?" Cell phones now help circumvent the pecularities of geography that had cause problems with laying physical lines.
Assuming costs can be consolidated, I see a huge market for wireless Internet in underdeveloped countries, particularly in mountainous regions like the Andes. This is their future.
Wordnik, a dictionary project which aims to collect
www.grameen.org, Grameen Bank, a microlending bank in Bangladesh
wlink.com.np, an affordable ISP in Nepal
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/6.01/barlow.htm l, a Wired article by John Perry Barlow about his travels in Africa and Internet access availability there
WWJD for a Klondike Bar?
My sister is in the Peace Corps in Nepal, and there has been alot of adoption of the internet in the touristy spots (Kathmandu, Pakhara, etc.), but there was also adoption in places that were definately NOT touristy. I recently went over to visit her and there were internet access storefronts, and places to use email (for a small fee ~30 cents per email, including computer usage to write it), all over the place.
Last night I was caught off guard when she wrote me an email from her own dialup account (hosted by wlink.com.np) She now has, for ~US$20 a month, 10 hours of full internet usage that she can use from her house (20+ hours by bus from Kathmandu). I did notice that the ping times were up near 900ms for their web server, but still, it is in Nepal (and just to note, it is using Linux according to netcraft.
Since alot of the technology workers in the US take trips to Nepal, many of you might know, just how amazing thinking about the internet in Nepal actually is.
Actually, "starting" an ISP in such a country is not that hard technologically speaking. Please remember that's what Open source is for: any third-world country can benefit from Linux/BSD (as well as SendMail/Apache/etc...) projects. These are, after all, proven OS, with a good track record, lots of sources of information and so on and so forth.
Also remember that PC is pretty much commodity hardware these days, which means it's fairly unexpensive, as long as the country you are working in has low import duties on these machines. In the worst possible case, I have known people (in Africa, for instance) who will smuggle (smaller) portable computers or even whole disassembled computers bought cheaply elsewhere in the world.
Thanks to the optimization done by open-source volunteers all over the globe, even low-end machines can handle pretty heavy workloads -- even ultra-cheap "obsolete" machines such as 486 and low-end Pentiums.
The real problems therefore are:
Also, please remember that in most of these countries, as sad as it is to say, you have very little (or none at all) legal recourse if you don't like what the government is doing. Democracy, even in the best of cases, is still, unfortunately, a very remote concept to the day-to-day life of most people in the Third World.
Finally, there is the little question of profit -- few individuals or corporations are wealthy enough to be able to afford a PC, let alone a 'net connection.
Just my US$ 0.02...
The right to offend is far more important than the right not to be offended. (Rowan Atkinson)
Pakistanis have had Internet access for many many years. There are dozens and dozens of ISPs in every major city. Unlike the US and some other countries the govt. has not tried to control the Internet. There are no laws for Internet censorship.
Situation is far from perfect but it is better than some of the developed countries.
Encryption is outlawed in Pakistan. But almost everybody uses software that has some sort of encryption built-in and I have never heard of a case where govt. tried to crack on use of encryption. The encryption law is very old and is mostly the result of a hostile neighbour India.
I wish I had been able to post ealy on this topic, but let me set a few things straight for some of the "I live my life through a tv set" slashdotters who have posted comments without any knowledge of life in a developing country.
Yes, there are poor people in Ethiopia (I use Ethiopia as an example because my family lived there for about 4 years).
Yes, there are poor people in London, New York and Paris who couldn't give a shit about the net.
During my time in Africa I met a huge number of educated, open-minded (and some reasonably wealthy) people who embrace advances in technology.
For those slashdotters who paint a picture from 15 years ago - constant famine, country-wide warfare, etc. -let me dispell a myth.
They are not all poor, uneducated, starving and homeless.
They watch tv at the local bar (where they drink beer or whiskey). They live in homes and eat food.
In other words, they live there lives as a complete human being and not just a 2 dimensional character you watched on LIVE AID!
There will be some cultures that will be very hesitant to take to the internet. We have already seen resistance by some sects of the Jewish faith, and more recently there have been news articles referring to efforts in France to ban use of phrases such as "e-mail", due to a fear that it is watering down there language. Simply take a look at the level of control that China is trying to gain over its populace access to the internet.
But before we go forward and laugh at these groups and those that will surly follow, lets take a moment and look at their fears. Recent history is riddled with stories of cultures that have all but been removed from existence because they got in the way of "progress". In the United States alone we can point to the Native American's and the Inuit's. They have found that there is little to no room for their culture in our "modern" world.
I believe that many will see the internet in much the same way that the native inhabitants of the US saw the settlers. The fear is justified; over time the continuous exposure to dominant foreign cultures will likely erode many of the facets of other cultures that make them unique.
Is this bad? It has the promise of allowing more people to be able to hold a dialog to share ideas and philosophies on a scale that has never before been possible. Yet I have to admit that I can understand the sense of loss that a proud nation may feel as they discover that slowly cease to exist, one keystroke at a time.
all persons, living and dead, are purely coincidental. - Kurt Vonnegut
Just look at the Net access numbers. Less than 0.7 percent of the Arab world is online. South Africa and the Seychelles are the only parts of Africa with more than one percent penetration. The numbers aren't all that much better for South America, and, significantly, the world's most populous countries, China and India, lag behind the rest of Asia.
These percentages are not all that revealing, though. The important thing is the percentage of new Net users is climbing. In all those areas, the number of people with Net access is small, but the rate of increase is impressive.
Because of the infrastructure problems, only those who can afford Net access in each country spend money getting online. That means that only the very wealthy can reap the benefits of interconnectedness in those places - so, to answer your question, one of the early effects of Net access in many of these countries has been (and will continue be) the exacerbation of class disparities. We can only hope that will change, as Net access gets cheaper - but it will be terribly cruel for years as the impoverished around the globe see the fruits of the Net dangling in front of them, just beyond grasp.
There are other interesting implications, like the effects on cultural understanding. James Burke commented in an interview some years ago that he hoped the Internet would have the effect of forcing Americans to see how different the rest of the world is. I haven't noticed the kind of cultural broadening he imagined, but it may be forced upon other nations. So much of the Internet is in English, and so many important services and products originate in the English-speaking world, that late-comers to the Net may find their cultural identity under attack. One hopes that cultural-specific Net services will arise to meet their needs.
And, finally, there is little evidence as yet of the Net's liberalizing political influence. In fact, we are still in the awful early stage, where countries like China are placing stringent restrictions on Net access and are deciding which Web sites are acceptable for their population. Hopefully, this will diminish with time, but it is possible that these regimes may just grow more desperate as their control of information wanes - and desperation can lead to dangerous unpredictability.
We've got some more articles posted on our Equity page.
A. Keiper
I know they use e-mail in countries like pakistan, bangladesh, etheopia, kenya and nigeria to order things like used cars and tractors because it's just a lot cheaper than using a fax. Or they use email to fax through a portal, the person on the other side will get the fax with some added advertisements. I have a friend who does import/export of cars and tractors to these countries and i've seen a lot of email traffic for orders and confirmations.
I am not sure it is really worth going into too much depth on this topic. This seems like the kind of thing someone brings up at a party just to start conversation. However, I will throw in my own 2 cents.
One major issue I think worth mentioning is the leap-frog effect. Under-developed countries are able to jump into to a new market with the best technology, passing by outmoded forms. The example I am most familiar with is Brazil (although large and rich as third world countries grow, it still has large numbers of very poor, starving, and barefoot people). It is far cheaper in Brazil to get a cellular phone than a regular phone, and I have never seen so many cell phones in my life as in Brazil. Taxi drivers and maids alike all had them. This is because it is cheaper to put up a cell-tower than it is to lay hundreds of miles of regular land line. Since, the telecommunications infrastructure is lacking in the boondocks, they have just adopted cellular technology. I saw a man driving a donkey cart talking on a cellphone. Talk about culture shock. Third World countries that do invest in internet technology, will at least have the fortune of avoiding many of our (in the US) mistakes.
As far as the social impact, I think that certainly depends on the government and the culture of the country involved. It will always turn out that that freedom of information will win in the long run, despite growing pains along the way. China should learn from this, and their focus on their manned spaceflight program shows how far behind the United States they are.
Taking another example from Brazil, a country known for its sociable people, I would mention the popularity of IRC. It is huge with Brazilian young people, and it is becoming increasingly so with people from 2nd and 3rd world countries around the globe.
People in other countries will end up doing the same things people in the US do. They will use the Internet to talk to each other. This is what the average user does. Maybe they will look at a little porn, maybe buy some stuff from eBay or whatever is the analog in the language of their choice, but in the end it will popular for the same reason AOL is popular, things like Chat Rooms. Just like the Internet is, in the end, popular because of things like /.
"Politics is for the moment, an equation lasts eternity" -A. Einstein
I would recommend looking at Grameen's work in this area. Grameen Bank was started by Mohammed Yunnus (sp?!), and economist from Bangladesh, who realized that all his hifalutin theories were not relavant to the impoverished women next door to his university. He began a micro-lending institution which has grown to an international institution. Really terrific stuff, see his book "Banker To the Poor".
The relevancy to this topic: Grameen has gotten into telecommunications and the Internet lately, but maintained a focus on the classically impoverished portions of society. Witness the "cell-phone lady", who is a woman in a village who owns a cellphone and charges others a small fee to use it to call other villages, where another "cell-phone lady" provides a similar service.
Incidentally, wireless networking is a very good solution in third world countries, where landlines have a nasty habit of being torn down, possibly for use as scrap copper...
see www.grameen.org for more.
excellent topic, by the way.
nathan
*urp!*
While I am no expert, I can see that the biggest cultural shock is the freedom of speech that the internet fosters. Many of these countries' local governments have tight controls over the news and telecommunication media. The internet is new ground, practically uncontrollable (unless we all fall asleep). The upside and downside is that everyone would generally benefit from the free availability of information; it is up to each country to adapt to the rules of the game.
Even though I don't live there any more I visit regularly and keep well informed of affairs through regular phone calls and emails with my mom.
In Nigeria the government sanctioned minimum wage was recently (actually about 1 year ago) increased to about $50 a month. Even though there is great wealth in the country it is disproportionately distributed with a few being mega-rich, some living at subsistence level and millions living below UN poverty levels. In countries like Nigeria the Internet is far from being a social phenomenon and is seen more as a business tool for those that can afford it (banks, oil companies, etc.) or as a plaything for the rich. The average individual has little access to potable water, electricity and telephones let alone a high bandwidth connection and a PC. Most people who need to use the internet go to business centres (places like Kinkos) and pay per minute to check their hotmail or send email to relatives who live too far away to call.
The internet may be ubiqituos and a way of life here (i.e. the US) but this is a far cry from what is happening in third world countries.
India is probably the leader in not only the less
developed world, but also most of Asia for getting
net technology out on the streets- they have some problems like a severely overregulated telecom industry however, bascially crippling the infrastructure (they keep saying this will change in a few years, but I have not seen any real progress).
Socially speaking, the uneducated and to a large extent, the older generation in any country
will take a very long time to derive the full benefits or realize the full impacts of (liberating) technology- this is as true in the U.S. where the dribbling milksop masses are still thinking of the net as a replacement for the Home Shopping Network. The same holds true for much of India- the majority of the middle and upper class think of computers and the internet as something for their young.
On the other token, where it has caught on, it has caught on like wildfire- Bangalore (India's equivalent of Silicon Valley) is a good example of it. Bangalore used to be a smallish dusty town in South India. It has now expanded into an economic tiger, with streets lined with Indian intelligentsia, and internet cafes and hardware shops crammed in nooks and crannies in slum-ridden alleys in a expanding radius around M.G. road (Bangalore's equivalent of El Camino Real, or the Chelsea district in Silicon Alley). It is now one of India's more progessive cities in terms of attitudes towards women, religion, inebriants, etc. On the same token, the increase in wealth has caused questionable materialism to popup- the only American style malls in India (last I visited).
On a large scale, the net effect in the current economic situation is kind of a hyper-globalization: You can see this by the amount of American influence in Bangalore and the Indian influence in say, Santa Clara or Cupertino in Silicon Valley.
This globalization is kind of a new Cambrian explosion of memes that are not geographically centralized- its unlike colonialism or imperialism in which there is a controlling authority and a predominant meme, but rather, many similar attitudes on what was previously on the "fringe" of a culture (in terms of sexuality, religion, politics) now pop up in disparate regions. In other words: A San Francisco geek probably has a lot more in common with an Calcutta geek than a San Francisco geek has in common with a Kansas City non-geek. Whether this is good or bad- whether our global diversity level is declining or whether there is an explosion in individual choice- has yet to be seen IMHO. One thing I can say for sure is that the phenomena of people who are wired breaking political, cultural, and economic boundaries is not an American phenomena (all the more reason we need to fight tooth an nail to keep expanding our freedoms).
Economically, India is experiencing an upsurge due o the expansion of technology in its borders. This is leading towards a burgeoning middle class, and a general hope for the next generation.
All in all, the impact of tech on India is straight out of a William Gibson novel- its a country in which 5000 years of history is not going to go away, but instead is marrying the the modern world, and producing something truly weird. It is definately a trip hanging out in a net cafe in New Delhi, when you see several cows wandering by the window, alongside the beggars, sanyasis, businessmen, all choking in the same haze caused by the coal driven smokestack power plants in the center of the city.
The parental units in India are enthusiastic for their children- they see the Internet as a way for their children to start getting out of poverty. The government is taking the same attitude. This is probably unusual for most third world countries at large, since India has always had a high degree of respect and tolerance for diversity and complexity (things that the internet bring along with it), and generally has an anarchistic attitude on life.
I am definately interested in hearing what other people have observed so far in this process- in particular with religion: How are strict Hindhu, Christians, and Muslims handling the internet and its open views on the world? This question applies particularly to more closed off countries like Pakistan and Myannamar.
... Just some random thoughts.
I honestly have no idea how other countries will deal with the internet. Countries like the US that tend to allow more freedom of expression can't even handle it. Every time I turn arround someone wants to sue an mp3 site, censor in the name of stopping porn, jerk away peoples domain names without due process, restrict the export of encryption, and force people to remove DVD code from their web sites.
Yes I think it is safe to say, the US of A definitely can not handle what's going on - and if anything goes down - it will go down here first. In fact, it is almost frightening, because many large corporations have bet over a trillion dollars on the assumption that copyrights are a basic right, they're not, they're not sustainable, and they're not enforcable. It's only a matter of time before all hell breaks loose.
David