Slashdot Mirror
Only One Quarter of the Planet To Be Online By 2012
Stony Stevenson writes "Researchers are predicting that one quarter of the world's population will be connected to the internet within the next four years. According to the report by Jupiter Research, the total number of people online will climb to 1.8 billion by 2012, encompassing roughly 25 percent of the planet. The company sees the highest growth rates in areas such as China, Russia, India and Brazil. Overall, the number of users online is predicted to grow by 44 percent in the time period between 2007 and 2012." Is it just me or does that seem incredibly small?
It does seem small, but you have to consider that most of the world doesn't live up to 'industrialized' and 'information age' standards of living. Its actually a pretty incredible number.
Seriously, it's just you.
It breaks my pluginses, my precious!
... or do you not realize how poor most of the planet is?
Look at the tomato! Isn't it sad? He can't dance! Poor tomato!
I think if the world knew about the Raunchy porn available on the internet, by 2012 at leat 98% of the planet would be online.
Without seeing the survey I can't confirm this, but I would suspect that they are only counting Internet connections to the home or office. The number is much larger when you consider the number of people in developing and 3rd world nations who access the Internet in public venues, like cafes and libraries. But getting a good count here would be very complex.
...En að Besta Sem Guð Hefur Skapað Er Nýr Dagur
THAT'S WHAT SHE SAID!!!
It's easy for us 1st world Westerners to forget what life is like most people in China, India, Africa, etc. Sure, things are getting better in those places, but that's only for the middle and upper class.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
About one quarter of the world doesn't have electricity. (1.6 B according to IEA, 2 B according to Greenpeace).
If you haven't been down-modded lately, you aren't trying.
Sacred cows make the best hamburger.
Isn't that all of us? I thought the Earth was covered by 75% water? iT
According to Wikipedia, there are 1.407 billion people online in 2008. So they're predicting a 30% increase over 4 years? Considering in the 1990s we would have had a 1500% increase over 4 years (again, using Wikipedia as a source: 100% increase per year), that seems remarkably underwhelming.
So then 4,294,967,296 addresses should be enough for everybody
mod me funny
http://www.teamstoendpoverty.org/wq_pages/en/visages/chiffres.php
Maybe is because u live in a rich country and you dont know what is happening in the rest of the world.
Lucky bastards!
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know what's going to be said. But, if you have enough to eat, a place to live, and decent medical care, what else do you really need?
If it weren't for work, this internet connection would ripped out of the wall. Feb 17th, I'm probably not going to get a new TV - I use bunny ears, baby! No overpriced shit cable for me! So, I'll do without.
All this electronic shit just adds to my stress and it's making me unhappy.
I'd rather be happy and ignorant about World events, than miserable about shit I have no control over.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Do you know what portion of the planet doesnt have clean running water? Or a reliable electricity supply? Any idea what portion of the planet exists on less than a dollar per day?
AC
The number of people online divided by the world's population is a not fair comparison. Think of all the infants and toddlers that aren't online because they are too young, or all the people who are too disabled to use the Internet. Even if you theoretically included the people who didn't have electricity or money to get onto the 'net in the calculation, it still doesn't make sense to include those who are otherwise not physically able to use a computer if they had one. I would like to see the percentage of people on the 'net relative to the number of people who CAN be on the yet, as in physically able.
... will be using dial up.
THE HONOUR OF THE KNIGHTS - CC Licensed Sci-Fi Novel
I thank the overall literacy rate must be related to this - even abundant access to a computer won't mean much if you can't read. According to the OLPC website, "Most of the nearly twoâ"billion children in the developing world are inadequately educated, or receive no education at all. One in three does not complete the fifth grade." Also, let's not forget that much of the world does not have access to electricity on a regular basis. Also from the OLPC website: "...XO can be recharged by human power. This is a critical advance for the half-billion children who have no access to electricity."
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When you consider that some people live in huts and hunt their food, food which varies from plants to animals to other people...it really don't seem odd that not everyone is surfing to me. In all seriousness though, very little of the planet can afford such frivolous things like the internet, or even running water for that matter.
"Is it just me or does that seem incredibly small?"
God, you sound like my girlfriend...
According to the 2006 Human Development Report even if the Millennium Development Goal for water is achieved, "there will still be more than 800 million people without water and 1.8 billion people without sanitation in 2015" (page 4). Is it just me or does that seem outrageously big?
Dawkins Revisited: A person is shit's way of making more shit -- Steve Barnett, anthropologist.
n/t
... in reality, it's incredibly large!
Having lived in what is effectively a third world country, South African, for about 15 years, one thing is painfully obvious when compared with life in a first world country. The vast majority of people have little to no access to electricity, let alone the internet!
It's very hard to understand this unless you witness it first hand - it's all to easy to think "but surely everyone needs to be on the internet?"
The reality is for most of humanity, the struggle to put food on the plate and shelter themselves is the main driving force in their daily lives.
I'm therefore suprised at how many people are online, not how few - completely the opposite reaction to the parent.
A slashdotting - you get the stick first and then the carrot !
Firstly you need to think of how many third world countries there are and also developed nations where there is a vast agricultural society where the internet is just an irrelevant "fancy" for city dwellers to keep themselves entertained. You and I might find the internet a necessary tool for our trades and daily lives but going back 20 or 30 years, could you see yourself becoming so dependent on such a device as a people? Instant information and communication have become woven into the very fabric of who we are but there are many more people out there that simply have no use for it. It steals idle time like heroin steals life. You only need to walk away from it for a few days, or hours in some cases, to feel its draw. Many that have fell into its grasp cannot free themselves, their very livelihood depends on it. For others, the majority it seems, it is simply a useless tool or senseless toy to occupy the minds of those who have access to it. To them it's as useful as a canoe is to a desert goat herder.
Cheap portables like eee and olpc has only come recently, they will fall in price as production increases. Most people has access to TV today, these computers will soon be cheaper than a Tv-set. Just as many developing countries went straight to mobile phones, with no land lines first, most will probaly access the internet through mobile connections. Internet is just as helpful to a person in a poor country as it is to a westener. The estimate IS increadably small.
It is just you. There are literally billions of people who have not heard of WoW, a MacBook, or your parents' basement. There IS a whole world out there, you know, in that room outside the server room, where the sky is sometimes blue and sometimes black with little white led lights, where the HVAC is on the blink half the time. You know that big room?
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
I don't think you realize the true definition of poor.
No one is going to by an Eee on $3/day. No matter what the price.
Gone!
Those 4 countries are called BRIC countries.
Braz, Russ, India, China
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
anyone?
China, Russia, India and Brazil... is it a coincidence that those are the four main countries whose traffic I drop from my servers ? 99.44% of the traffic is spam, and the remainder is irrelevant to my business. If they love my snarky comments so much, they can use a proxy or VPN (yeah, right!)
Is Jupiter Research basically saying I need to unblock those folks ? Or are they really suggesting we'll have even more botnet slaves online by 2012 ?
-Billco, Fnarg.com
1.8 billion people online is fantastic. Sure we want more, but let's not forget that a whole lot of people!
1.8 billion people communicating outside there immediate sphere of influence. The lower the bar to knowledge, the better the global society will be.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
that in 2008 only 50% of the planet will have a telephone.
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/med_tel_sub-media-telephone-subscribers
Give a man a fish and he'll eat for day, teach him how surf and he'll get two medium pizzas, a bottle of pepsi and two free side dishes for just $9.99*.
And there's always enough left for breakfast.
*chicken dippers $1.00 supplement
In the 21st Century when there are still Amazon tribes living in the stone age who've never seen a white man, people in Africa who still die from hunger, and societies where woman are treated worse than domestic animals; over 1 billion served on the Internet is an encouraging sign. The Internet has had an amazing expansion in it's relatively short life. If we can double it's usage in the NEXT 20 years then the world will be a much different place and a lot of us will still be around to see it. I'm actually encouraged by the numbers.
Only 53% of the world has cell phones. Only 51% of the world has running water. So 25% doesn't seem small at all.
December 24, 2012, Morning. - a full 25% of the population is now online
December 24, 2012, Afternoon. - Skynet goes live, and becomes self-aware
December 24, 2012, Evening. - Skynet decides to remove the virus known as mankind from the planet starting with the 25% most easily accessble, the 25% that is online.
December 25, 2012, Morning. - The Mayans are proven right, December 25, 2012 represents the end of the civilization
"...a civilian some of the time, a soldier part of the time and a patriot all of the time." -Brig. Gen. James Drain
It's just you.
I was in India last year, and while everyone even in the countryside has an e-mail address, they check it once every week or two, when have a few extra rupees to head to an Internet shop. I wonder if these people are counted?
Most people in industrialized nations has access to TV today
There, fixed it for you.
Probably because you were raised retarded.
These numbers are simply unacceptable. With all these free services such as Gmail, Twitter, and NetZero, the failure of all these people to go get their free Internets can only be attributed to laziness.
It is, after all, very important that we get free internet porn to as many people as we can, the whole world over.
If you don't know what you're doing, you can't make mistakes.
This is the only valid reason I've ever seen for posting AC.
That's 1.5+ billion people. That's a bigger population than China or India. Frankly, that's astounding.
http://twitter.com/OLDTELEGRAM
Half the population of earth live on less than $2 a day.
So there are 3/4 of the earths population that have yet to claim their inheritance from their long lost relatives in Nigeria. It's only a small money transfer away ...
China, Russia, India: I don't want to think of the levels of forum spam message board operators will face by 2012 if citizens of these countries come online in droves. Most of the manual human-entered spam on my forum already comes from those three countries, as well as the Philippines.
That's what your MOM said.
Oh... wait...
--- I do not moderate.
Considering the percentage that don't have access to clean drinking water..? Yeah, it's just you.
None of this matters, the entire planet is going offline in 2012
Do people actually think about what this will mean.
As far as a previous comment about wars...I see this as increasing them...what is the easiest way to learn how to make a bomb, where to find an arms dealer, how to spread a fanatical religion? Does anyone think of this? I know that in the United States the web is monitored by the government but there are no controls in other countries....?
I agree that some things should be monitored..ie.. threats, radical (proven) religious fanatics, munitions orders and the like...however I don't agree that anyone else should be able to read my email or see what I'm looking at on the internet without having just cause to.
Maybe I'm biased but trying to get the whole world on the net just doesn't excite me as much.
Wonder what the actual percentage of Americans online currently is.
Some people never learn...no matter how many times something happens to them.
> is it just me or does that seem incredibly small?
Possibly; you do seem incredibly small...
Max.
Case in point: my wife and I were in Laos visiting her relatives. We were going to a village, and I wanted to use our video camera there. I asked if there was electricity there, and was told "yes", so I did not bother charging the battery. When we got there, this is what ensued:
Me: Can I plug this in here?
Them: No, we do not have electricity.
Me: Okay, who's house can we go to to plug this in?
Them: No one's. No one has electricity.
Me: But I thought you said there was electricity here!
Them, pointing at the electricity lines coming into the village, which terminate at a big transformer box on a pole: We do have electricity here, it's just that no one has been able to pay to have it connected yet!
Ray Kurtzweil, in "The Singularity is Coming," describes the oversight of many technological estimates due to a misunderstanding of the technological curve. As the rate of technological evolution increases, we become faster and faster at finding innovative solutions to our everyday problems. While 44 percent may be the estimate at our current rate of technological adeptness, by the time 2012 rolls around, I suspect this percentage will be much higher, as our ability to create networked devices (computers, hand held devices, etc) will have increased exponentially (along the current pre-defined curve). As manufacturing cost drops and functionality of a personal device increases, I don't think it's out of line to see all-in-one hand held devices come to fruition pretty soon (they're already popular in Japan). Plus, satellite and cell internet access are getting faster and faster (as well as cheaper and cheaper), making it easier for people to get connected; hence, 44 percent does, in fact seem pretty low.
Internet usage has increased 290% in the last 8 years, or an average of less than 20% per year. If growth slowed from 100%/yr in the 1990s to 20%/yr in the 2000s, it should be no surprise that the next few years will see growth that's slower yet.
(This is, incidentally, a nice example of the folly of blindly extrapolating exponential growth rates; if the 2000s had seen the 100% growth rate you talk about, we'd have about 100 billion internet users on earth right now. The other response mentions logistic curves, which you really should look into; they're a standard technique for modelling adoption of technology, and show quite clearly how exponential early growth will progressively slow as the population becomes saturated.)
Everybody knows the world will end in 2011.
I read Slashdot for the headlines, because the headlines, unlike the articles, are usually original and never duplicated
We are talking about a technology that really only became mass-market ready some 15 (or so) years ago.
And yet, a quarter of the entire world's population is using it already (or will be shortly)?
That is actually completely astonishing. Leave aside what many here have pointed out (large portions of the population not even having electricity, may not be able to read, etc.). Just try to remember any other technology that has spread to 1/4 of the world population in a time of just 15-20 years? Hm? Can't think of any? Me neither.
Add to that the fact that the Internet is not only a new technology, but also has the potential to change societies and the way we view the world, communicate, break through the publishing monopoly, etc. So, it's not only technically new, but also rather revolutionary on a sociological level.
And it has spread to 1/4 of the population in an incredibly short time.
Truly astonishing.
I'm not to sure that I would trust the numbers on this site. Take a look at life expectancy of Canada and Russia for example (the years are actually the relative position)
http://www.nationmaster.com/country/ca-canada/hea-health
http://www.nationmaster.com/country/rs-russia/hea-health
isn't the end of the mayan calendar in 2012? none of this will matter , save for the fact that 25% of the world will be able to say 'neener neener neener' to the other 75%
According to http://www.gsmworld.com/ there are now over 3.1 billion mobile phone subscribers in the world.
The mobile web will be on all of them soon...so obviously this estimate doesn't take this into account.
Wireless technologies should let them all join the internet for less cost and with more freedom.