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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 The striking trend, described in an unpublished report shared with the Guardian, shows the rate at which the world is getting online has fallen sharply since 2015, with women and the rural poor substantially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."
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...
Bonus.
Maybe the "new" has worn off, and now some civility can be established on the web.
Came here to say exactly this. If the people that remain offline are in inaccessible areas that you usually need a full group of sherpas and a week's worth of supplies to go visit in a Tibetan monastery then maybe, just maybe, it's not exactly cost effective to bury a fiber cable all the way up there.
And I don't mean just cost effective in this quarter but in this century.
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Missing out on a lot of micro transactions with thinking like that.
So it's yet another 80/20 problem?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
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?
They missed the part about global warming slowing the digital revolution.
love is just extroverted narcissism
So it's yet another 80/20 problem?
Right now it is about 50/50, with about half the world online. African women are least likely to be online, European men the most.
Iceland is #1, with 98.2% adoption. Eritrea is at the bottom, with 1.2%.
Internet adoption is still growing at about 6%. That isn't as good as a few years ago, but is still solid growth.
In many places, the problem is not infrastructure, but politics. For instance, Eritrea is one of the world's most repressive countries.
Downmodding is easier than engaging, lol :)
It's the fine article itself that made the point about "women and poor hardest hit" ... the "poor" part is fairly obvious - it takes money to get online - but the "women" part less so.
It's reasonable to ask what factors, including cultural factors, might be involved there.
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.
It's not even as bad as that. The rate that was shown in the article was about the rate of growth of the number of people with internet access. I tried working backwards with the figures they gave (44.9% of women, 50.9% of men, for an average of 47.9%) and estimating the percentage of the world's population that had internet access in each of the years the graph in the article showed a growth rate for. The resulting numbers give an almost linear increase of 3% per annum, so the numbers getting online each year isn't diminishing, it's just that each year there are more already online compared to newcomers. If that trend continues the entire world will be online around 2035.
I should have said, a 3% linear increase in the percentage of world populalation online.
Except there is a good part of the population living in these areas who would rather stay there then move to the City.
There are a lot of people who do not want to live in the city. And will fight tooth and nail (and probably guns, a lot of guns) to keep their homes.
Also many of these rural areas need internet, because rural areas are used for farming, and modern farming is often more advanced then most tech companies in silicon valley.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
If you're in extreme poverty, does internet access really help your situation any?
Ahh, that makes sense. They're trying to create an exponential growth in a finite population and that'll never happen.
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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.
It's like when they say the rate of cell phone adoption has decreased. It's because everyone has one.
Culture. Some cultures don't allow women to do much other than cook food and make babies.
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"Women are victims" is an easy lazy tagline to throw into any story to give it more sociological cred. Its like adding adjectives to pad out the length of your writing assignment.
Or at least, everyone who wants one.
This sounds like your standard sigmoid growth curve; lower slope - early adopters, steep slope - going mainstream, flattening off near the top - saturation.
But where's the story in that?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Somebody hand these morons a capacitor, a resistor, a battery, and an oscilloscope.
Or even just a common cellphone, already charged to 90%