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?
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.
OK, I'm going to go completely outside the box for a moment and risk getting mocked for this, but what the hell...
What if we did get people without food and clean water online?
There is enough clean water for everyone. There is enough food for everyone. It isn't getting to the people that need it for various reasons; corruption, war, market failures. The common thread in these is a lack of correct information; corruption involves people deliberately misrepresenting information, war makes it dangerous to collect information, and market failures are normally trigged by bad information.
Areas where people starve are normally pretty opaque to information and that makes it harder to help people. If we were to give people in these areas better means of communication might it help allocate resources to solving the problems of food, water etc? It would be similar to how mobile phones were used to let the world know what was happening in Burma not long ago. Better information means better action.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
Civilians in areas requiring aid could, if they were connected, report the movement of warlords (and as often, government troops) that might interrupt food shipments. Having lines of communication could also provide a way of verifying the contents of packages.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
I have yet to see an internet cafe here in India. Two types of people exist.. the ones with access to the internet because they work in software and make money.. and the day laborers who don't know what a computer is.
There is no middle ground. You will not see a day laborer hitting up a cafe to check his email. Just no.
I'm now in Poland: http://williamwnek