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The Rate at Which the World is Getting Online Has Fallen Sharply Since 2015, New Report Suggests (theguardian.com)
Ian Sample, writing for The Guardian: The growth of internet access around the world has slowed dramatically, according to new data, suggesting the digital revolution will remain a distant dream for billions of the poorest and most isolated people on the planet. The striking trend, described in an unpublished report shared with the Guardian, shows the rate at which the world is getting online has fallen sharply since 2015, with women and the rural poor substantially excluded from education, business and other opportunities the internet can provide.
The slowdown is described in an analysis of UN data that will be published next month by the Web Foundation, an organisation set up by the inventor of the world wide web, Sir Tim Berners-Lee. The data shows that growth in global internet access dropped from 19% in 2007 to less than 6% last year. "We underestimated the slowdown and the growth rate is now really worrying," said Dhanaraj Thakur, research director at the Web Foundation. "The problem with having some people online and others not is that you increase the existing inequalities. If you're not part of it, you tend to lose out."
The slowdown is described in an analysis of UN data that will be published next month by the Web Foundation, an organisation set up by the inventor of the world wide web, Sir Tim Berners-Lee. The data shows that growth in global internet access dropped from 19% in 2007 to less than 6% last year. "We underestimated the slowdown and the growth rate is now really worrying," said Dhanaraj Thakur, research director at the Web Foundation. "The problem with having some people online and others not is that you increase the existing inequalities. If you're not part of it, you tend to lose out."
It's not fair only the first and second world can view porn on demand.
20 years ago the internet was a valuable resource. Now it's pretty much worthless, a cesspool of privacy invasion, spying, advertizing and battleground for the so-called "culture war".
It's not about reducing inequality, it's about getting fresh meat into the machine to be exploited for everything they are worth...
Thank you for being a friend.
Travel down the road and back again.
Your heart is true, you're a pal and a cosmonaut.
And if you threw a party,
invited everyone you knew.
You would see the biggest gift would be from me
and the card attached would say,
thank you for being a friend.
Bonus.
The smaller and smaller percentage of people not yet online will require greater and most costly infrastructure to bring online. At some point it will be easier to relocate entire population to urbanized areas than to upgrade their local technological level by the necessary amount.
The Internet is going down in these. Instead of search typing people's are now using voice search. This is the biggest turn into the world of internet. As I am managing a site called whatsapp dp images my site has no searching yet due to that voice search.
The internet growth fell the sharpest after UUnet stopped publishing bogus data and went bust.
Rate limiters, low hanging fruit, Russian hacking ect.
Two things
1. Duh - rate of technology spread slows, low hanging fruit eaten first, getting to last edges of something much harder than initial gains. News at 11.
2. "with women and the rural poor substantially excluded from education, business and other opportunities the internet can provide."
Re the rural poor, see point #1 (duh - "poor 'excluded' from stuff that costs money")
Re women being excluded/limited from stuff, see those wonderful cultures that we in the West are told we must import more and more of, because of all the wonderful "vibrance" they will bring us.
Maybe the "new" has worn off, and now some civility can be established on the web.
The only thing we ever got from the internet is Trump. I think we should shut the whole thing down until we get our shit together.
When you can barely get enough food to eat, or clean drinking water, internet access heads way down towards the bottom on the list of priorities.
Someone stumbled on creimer's poems and videos, and they set fire to their laptop.
Looks like someone's ordering a DDoS stress test of his webpage...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
"Saturation". Look it up.
There's *always* going to be a group of people who don't have access to the internet, whether it's because it's too expensive for them, they have no use for it, or they don't have access to at least one of the other requirements that are necessary to have an internet connection, like, you know, *electricity*.
The question from TFS really isn't why the growth rate is slowing down, it's why this should be "worrying". What dumb fuck is expecting 100% reach?
This really unfair: Women have got a longer life than men. Older people are less likely to use internet. All women should be younger than men but men are dying on purpose. The patriarchy at its paroxysm!
https://www.indexmundi.com/graphs/population-pyramids/european-union-population-pyramid-2016.gif
https://www.indexmundi.com/graphs/population-pyramids/world-population-pyramid-2016.gif
I have this great idea where you I get two people to invest in me, those two find 2 other people invest in them.
So a growth of 2 to 4 is 100%, from 4 to 7 is only 75%, while it is more. Amazeballs!
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Is Internet penetration slowing in the parts of the world where building the infrastructure to remaining large populations is the most difficult, because of either physical remoteness or social chaos, or is the problem getting to the most remote people in the developed world?
If you are operating off-grid in the Sierra Nevada, getting Internet service at a reasonable price will be no easier than joining the electrical grid. You can put up some solar panels for cheap basic power, but if your only chance at getting Internet is an Iridium subscription, you might opt to wait for Project Loon.
If you're in extreme poverty, does internet access really help your situation any?
It's called an S-Curve. It's the normal way things grow. First exponentially, then linearly, then logarithmicly. S-Curve. Say it once. Say it twice. Stop being surprised by this basic fact on everything. Maybe if dumb-ass MBA's and business people learned more about "growth" than "exponential" (which they don't understand) we could stop having these stupid, "Wow! This new thing is growing really fast. Oh no, this thing that was growing really fast isn't growing fast anymore. What is going on?" stories.
Women and minorities hardest hit! Thanks, guardian.
You make generalized statements without adding in what it is you're actually critiquing. When, in fact, he was right the entire time. Understanding why billions still aren't online isn't the problem here. It's the nature of the article and dumbass MBA's. I suspect... you have an MBA and that is all there is to it. Dumbass.
There are literally billions of cellphones in use in the world (yes the smartphone kind, not flip phones), in contrast to desktops and laptops in which there are only about 100 million in use. Considering there are only billions of adults in the world, and most of them are married, who doesn't have access to the internet, if not by having their own personal phone but access to a family member's?
What part of ”poorest and most isolated people” did you fail to understand? Sounds like an S to me (for now).
modern farming is often more advanced then most tech companies in silicon valley
Questionable, but at least In farming BS is a byproduct, not the main product.
That's because Comcast has raped all of those folks who they can get on board their ultra-expensive and completely broken network. The poor are left out.
Somebody hand these morons a capacitor, a resistor, a battery, and an oscilloscope.
Or even just a common cellphone, already charged to 90%