Who Is Getting Left Behind In the Internet Revolution? (sciencemag.org)

Reader sciencehabit writes: The internet is often hailed as a liberating technology. No matter who you are or what kind of country you live in, your voice can be amplified online and heard around the world. But that assumes that people can get on the internet in the first place. Research has shown that poverty and remoteness can prevent people from getting online, but a new study out today also shows that just belonging to a politically marginalized group can translate to poorer access. The study, published online today in Science, provides the first global map of the people being left behind by the internet revolution. Mapping the internet is hard. Although it is true that every computer with a connection has a real-world location, no one actually knows where they all are. Rather than being organized top-down, the world's computers are connected to each other by a bushy, redundant network of servers. Each country builds and maintains its own infrastructure for connecting citizens to the wider internet. The decision to expand and maintain the infrastructure in one region and not another is up to those in power. And therein lies the problem: Ethnic and religious minorities who are excluded from their country's political process may also be systematically excluded from the global internet.

Comments

Putting it into Perspective.

[BrendaEM]

Internet is expensive for everyone. As a thought experiment, divide what you make by $11,880, the poverty line, and then multiply your internet bill is by that much. In other words, if you make the average US income of: 53,657, you end up with a poverty harshness factor of: 4.516582491582492. Now multiply your internet bill by that much, such as the average internet bill of $45. You end up with an poverty adjusted bill of $203.24. That is not insignificant. In reality it's much worse. My phone is my 3rd most expensive thing after housing for which there is no HUD help, and food, for which I can't get foodstamps. I am below the poverty line.

[I tried to submit an article stating that California's phone credit program isn't working, but it never made it, like almost all the others I posted.]

Re:Putting it into Perspective.

[Anonymous Coward]

To see how much it would cost me if I were poor? I've been poor, didn't really tickle my jigglies much. Worked hard, saved harder, educated myself harder still. Now my kid has no idea what growing up poor is like, so I make her work hard and study hard like an asian parent, an A- is unacceptable.

I've been poor too. As in no-eating-for-a-few-days-because-there's-no-money poor, and an automobile was a luxury. I did not like it at all.

Successful now. But I grew up in a small town where everyone had to go to the same schools - rich or poor. There wasn't a big enough population to divide people or support private schools. Same with the neighborhoods, there wasn't really any bad ones and I freely could come and go as I pleased.

What if I didn't have that advantage? Say I grew up poor in a large city, where the only public school was a failing one, and private schools were unattainable? Where the neighborhood was so unsafe I couldn't have easily traveled to my local library like I did?

People still climb out of such a poverty trap like that, but they are rare. Would I have been one of the lucky ones? Or would the poor education have held me back, consigned me to menial jobs?

I don't know.

Even with my success, I've noticed my values are different. I drive 10 year old vehicles, buy clothes at the thrift store, and tend to be paranoid about making sure there's plenty of food in the house. I tend not to consume much, and when I do, its from the lower end of the spectrum - think a cheap cell phone on a cheap plan, an old small TV, no cable, etc. Not necessarily a bad thing, but I know poverty shaped my way of thinking. And that's with being in a good neighborhood with good schools. What if I grew up in a neighborhood where drugs were being openly sold and people died on the sidewalk, where poverty and low-paying jobs were the norm?

What would my values have been, and what I have accepted as normal?

Re:Putting it into Perspective.

[Tony Isaac]

Feeling blessed is an attitude, not a circumstance. It is a way of saying that I'm grateful to God for life, and for living in a country that rewards hard work.

If you believe you can't do better, you certainly won't. Many people who are poor are indeed poor because they are lazy or quitters. I recognize that there are people who have true disabilities or major problems that cause them to be poor, through no fault of their own, but this is the exception, not the rule.

I work with young people in an inner city neighborhood of Houston. I'm there to show them that they CAN achieve more, if they just want it and work for it. Some of them are showing signs of promise, but others continue to make the same bad choices that will lead to repeating their parents' lives of poverty. These behaviors are clearly visible, even in school age children.

I had many obstacles on my own way to a "successful" life. My parents lived well below the poverty line. Nobody came to my neighborhood with HUD vouchers or food stamps. Nobody gave me job training classes. I had to go after it, to want it, to work for it.

Everybody has things that "stop" them from achieving. Whining about obstacles doesn't help. Instead, start finding ways to achieve your goals despite those obstacles!

political motive vs. profit motive

[Jodka]

from the ./ summary:

Each country builds and maintains its own infrastructure for connecting citizens to the wider internet. The decision to expand and maintain the infrastructure in one region and not another is up to those in power. And therein lies the problem: Ethnic and religious minorities who are excluded from their country's political process may also be systematically excluded from the global internet.

Advocacy of individual economic freedom is often criticized because, among the many possible exercises of that freedom, is radical capitalism: the single-minded pursuit of profits over all other social concerns. Yet, a dedication to monetary profit alone in such conditions as described in the linked study would be preferable to the actual circumstance: a dedication to denying an oppressed group a vital service. Certainly there is much to be made by selling these groups internet service and someone is forgoing profits by not making those sales. More accurately, someone is compelled by government to forgo profits.

If all you want to do is make big profits, by definition you do not want to limit those profits by declining sales to politically unpopular groups.

The economist Milton Friedman said, "Human freedom and economic freedom work together." I disagree because that understates the connectedness of those freedoms; the two are one-in-the-same.

   

Re:political motive vs. profit motive

[kenh]

Rural phone/internet service infrastructure is funded by a tax collected on all phone lines.