Slashdot Mirror
Universal Internet Access Unlikely Until at Least 2050, Experts Say (theguardian.com)
Parts of the world will be excluded from the internet for decades to come without major efforts to boost education, online literacy and broadband infrastructure, experts have warned. From a report: While half the world's population now uses the internet, a desperate lack of skills and stagnant investment mean the UN's goal of universal access, defined as 90% of people being online, may not be reached until 2050 or later, they said. The bleak assessment highlights the dramatic digital divide that has opened up between those who take the internet and its benefits for granted and those who are sidelined because they either lack the skills to be online, cannot afford access or live in a region with no connection. "If there is any kind of faltering in the rate of people coming online, which it appears that there is, then we'll have a real challenge in getting 70%, 80% or 90% connected," said Adrian Lovett, CEO of the World Wide Web Foundation, an organisation set up by the inventor of the web, Sir Tim Berners-Lee.
You pay Verizon $225 a month, you get access.
Sci-Fi doom prediction.
Unlikely though.
Anyway they're just wires why are they so bloody expensive?
Spooky Old TV Show Features A Wall-Building Con Artist Named Trump - The 1958 episode of “Trackdown” had some eerie parallels to today.
Actually I could care less about the "snowflake" outrage over a lack of "universal Internet access".
You know the outrage that I am talking about don't you?
Those crybaby whiners, mostly from "first world" countries, (ok, call they "spoiled brats") that claim all sorts of this and that are "rights" just because some quasi-government agency that's part of the UN says so.
In "first world" countries Internet access is widely available, sometimes for a price and sometimes for free.
In "third world" countries Internet access is not widely available but it doesn't stop people from finding very creative ways to access it, and I applaud their creativity.
I guess feeding people, making sure they have clean water, proper sewage treatment, vaccines, etc. are less important needs than getting internet access.
What about SpaceX's Starlink? Surely that will be online long before 2050...
We have had a general lack of leadership for the past 50 years, which makes performing large infrastructure projects like this nearly impossible.
In America the biggest problem facing us isn't immigration, guns, abortion, or tax rates. But it is that we are running off generation(s) old infrastructure, for Communication, Power Transmission, Transportation, and Water. In Rural areas of America if you drive down the roads, which are often too twisted and unkempt for a fast enough driving speed, and not wide enough for multi-lane, there are modified telegraph poles, that hold haphazardly Power, Telephone, Cable, and sometime Fiber Optic, which due to the bad roads sometimes will get hit by a car and knock out a good chunk of your infrastructures in one spot. Then we have water supplies which is being polluted from older Industrial activity, or in water manes made while Lincoln was president, which are breaking and needing to be patched up, while chunks of cities need a boil water advisory.
We are living with an infrastructure of the early 20th century, which has been hacked and updated. Our Elected officials havn't been much of leaders taking advice from experts and working the tradeoffs and making a plan of action and pushing it. They have been just putting out fires, and trying to get money for their fixes.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
You pay Verizon $225 a month, you get access.
Who?
Where I live, the only Internet only provider is AT&T. The best connection I can get is a 1.5 Mbps/.25Mbps connection for $50/month. (They laid the fiber two years ago for that Uverse, but according to the tech, they're waiting for "government approval" - which works in my deeply Red state where government is demonized to the point of lunacy.)
Comcast doesn't offer internet only in my areas although, if I buy there $$$$$ cable TV package, I get internet access.
See, those fuckers bribed my state and local governments for this duopoly.
Of course, it was aaaaallll done for us consumers! Yes siree! ISPs don't do anything unless it benefits us consumers!
Thanks Pai. I bet the majority of “third world” countries will overtake the US in internet usage.
lack the skills to be online
Holy shit. That didn't stop the flood of un-educated users who flooded onto the internet since the Eternal September. Most of them lacked any desire to learn, any ability to make choices consistent with the good of the internet, and any cares except seeing that dancing hamster. They happily install anybody's spyware, happily use their birthdays as passwords, and happily run HotGirl.jpg.exe.
Now to be fair, a small percentage were able to learn and didn't do stupid shit like make Facebook the most powerful mass surveillance apparatus the world has ever seen or infest their own PCs with 59 types of malware. But those who both wanted and were able to learn the "skills to be online" were in the minority. A small minority at that!
Lack of "skills to be online" covers let us say 99% of the US population. Why should it suddenly be a problem when it comes to the 3rd world?
Internet will be so fucked up by then, that it doesn't matter to anyone, if they can get access or not.
Parts of the world will be excluded from the internet
That makes it sound like some evil entity is actively denying these people access. But is anyone actually doing that?
Being too poor to afford something or not being smart enough to do something is not the same thing as being excluded from these activities. I like airplanes and would love to build my own kit plane, but I'm not smart enough or skilled enough to do that. Am I being excluded from aviation by evil priviledged oppressors?
Send food
I think perhaps we should work more on 'universal access' to clean water, enough food to eat, and safe countries to live in for everyone, before we worry about 'universal internet access'. It's kinda hard to enjoy watching the box-centric antics of Maru on YouTube when you're dying of dehydration, malnutrition, or the local Warlord or Druglord is kicking in the door of your shack to steal your children, kill you, or both. Google, Facebook, and whoever else, can just wait their turn to monetize the rest of the 7,000,000,000 on this planet whose personal information they haven't been able to monetize yet.
Probably because a lot of folks are waiting for an alternative to Verizon or Comcast.
, maybe 2030.
The sats systems, 1-web and starlink, are coming. At first, they will be expensive, but by 2025, the prices will drop way down. More importantly, knowing the ppl behind both of these, they will likely build earth based transceivers that will simple relay between the sat and 1M signals to phones, laptops, etc for 3rd world nations. Basically, these will be made cheap. Why? Because it will enable lots of IOT.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Starlink... experts are stupid.
AC or not, you don't deserve to be modded -1 for this. However let's review for a moment some examples of what should constitute a 'national emergency':
o Massive natural disaster, like an asteroid hitting the U.S.
o Nation-wide pandemic
o Military forces invading the continental U.S.
o Total collapse of the U.S. economy, worse than the 2008 recession
Now, for contrast, let's review some examples of what should not constitute a 'national emergency':
o Massive wildfires in any given state (state emergency, not national)
o Weather event causing widespread flooding (again, state emergency)
o Magnitude 9 earthquake (scary, but again, state emergency)
o POTUS' favorite baseball team not winning the World Series
o Brown people emigrating from South American countries massing on our southern border
Throwing a hissy-fit because you can't get your gods-be-damned useless-ass billions-of-dollars FENCE built is not a 'national emergency'
Declaring a 'national emergency' so you can STEAL money allocated to legitimate DISASTER RELIEF within the country you were sworn to govern, protect, and defend should be considered a CRIMINAL ACT and Congress should step in and give a resounding "HELL, NO!" to it if tried.
Hope that clears up any ambiguity on the issue.
Universal means not just this planet, or just this star system or even just this galaxy .
First we need to develop a means of FTL communication
I think the feedback loops for such projects are too large, and hence, prone to "pet projects" and corruption/theft. That said, I think the locals/immediate users should pay for their own stuff - if it's not worth it, then it's not worth it; why invest in waste? To that end, I think having most roads as (automatic, electronic) tolls roads is a good idea; it shrinks the money feedback loops even smaller.
And I respectfully disagree regarding the 1000+ who sneak across our border every day as not being the biggest of our problems.
In a few years, governments and their corporate overlords may very well have turned the Internet into something that you may not even want to connect to if it's available in your locale.
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
The US could lead by example. Compared to other countries the US is unique in having a Large Population, with a low Population Density.
Russia has us beat on that score by a country mile so unique is not the right word. Unusual would be a better choice. Technically so does Brazil though because of the Amazon that is somewhat misleading.
In America the biggest problem facing us isn't immigration, guns, abortion, or tax rates.
Agreed. I would argue it is gerrymandering. Yeah our infrastructure is a problem but I'd argue it is a consequence of other structural problems - gerrymandering not the least among them.
We are living with an infrastructure of the early 20th century, which has been hacked and updated.
Don't know if you've traveled much but we're hardly unique in that regard. Much of western Europe has infrastructure that is similarly dated. Not saying they are better or worse but it's not a problem unique to the US.
"Brown people emigrating from South American countries massing on our southern border " - is not solved by any wall, certainly not shutting down the government.
I hope that clears up any ambiguity on the issue.
Oh the pathetic appeals to emotion in this one. Look for the key phrases and word choices....
a desperate lack of skills
stagnant investment
bleak assessment
dramatic digital divide
those who are sidelined
cannot afford
Because there was no life before the internet and look-at-ME-dia. Get a life emasculated feminated faggy fags and get your ass outside.
Another pile of dribble on Slashdot. General Internet access means via phones today. It is a first world method when a PC like device is used.
And what spreads availability of phones? NOT the price of the phone itself, but the roll out of the phone service across any given nation- and where any population is dense, this is now happening automatically. To not have access to the Internet now means living in a third world s--thole away from urban centres. Given the low GDP of these nations, no-one is going to pay to bring a modern mobile phone network of any quality to remote locations- well unless the satellite/air-based schemes of the Internet giants ever roll out.
The model follows the roll-out of original phone services in the early part of the 20th Century- or even railway services from a century earlier. Nothing about this is odd or 'racist'.
The ONLY way to change the situation is to force people in poorer nations to all live in urban centres- not exactly a reasonable idea.
And why does Slashdot CARE about everyone having the Internet? Cos it is a long term Orwellian Deep State goal for surveillance and control. For some of us the Internet empowers- but for the rest it controls.
The problem with the word "universal", is that it evokes a sense of outer space. The word "global" does a much better job of describing this planet.
It's better because instead of picturing black space and stars and radiation, one pictures water and trees and animals.
I think if one were to look at the cost of internet in any place that currently has internet access, one would discover that the monetary cost of that connection is enough to feed any place that currently does not have internet access.
For example, I pay about $80/month for incredible internet access at home. $80/month, as food, would easily feed a starving family in a third-world country.
But I think we've all watched the save-the-children-fund commercials for decades now. I think we all know that, as a people, they aren't savable by us. It's been decades, and they have more guns than seeds.
I think we, as wealthy societies, simply don't have a way to help them. Basic farming and basic living is a long-lost art to us. We call it "camping", and we bring a million dollars of technology with us -- the trailer, the water bottle, the stove, the match-stick, the roads to get there, and the ranger to call for help.
I'll happily pay to ship them as many seeds as they can plant, and ikea-style instructions on how to plant them. But I think we all know that isn't anywhere near enough. And I don't think we, here, have any clue why that doesn't work.
Bet ipv6 still won't be in common use by then.
In English, a word means its current COMMON usage. Actually this is how all languages work. Yet the dribblers who willingly visit this site (for any reason other than keeping an eye on current statist propaganda agendas) are so thick, they do not know this.
..and if you or anyone else is unclear on the issue: I'm in total agreement with that, and so is the MAJORITY OF THE COUNTRY.
Getting internet to people over a wide area is trivially easy now with a small investment. Getting food, water and prosperity to people over that area is a fucking CHALLENGE.
Also one's a market opener, and the other is just a hole to fill. It's obvious you haven't really thought much about helping people in real life. It's hard to do. It's not trivial like throwing up an internet wifi balloon.
MEAN OLD DRUMPF AND HIS HATRED OF BROWN PEOPLE!!!!!111111111
Guess that explains why Mexico hate the invaders too, right? You mental midgets need to grow up.
A lack of border security is an emergency for any nation. A nation without borders is not a nation. We must secure our borders before they become merely theoretical. We allow immigration, but the line starts at the US embassy. We need guarantees of employment, criminal background checks, verification of university degrees, and so much more.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Too bad Trump (the treasonous moron) isn't making a wall on the NORTHERN border, where 7 TIMES more terrorism suspects cross than the southern border, according to DHS stats. Derp, Republican morons lol.
Using the road analogy for the internet super highway,
I can drive tollway for an extra fee, or on a freeway for a cost, or walk on a road for free.
Go well
So? It's not a democracy. It's a republic. The system was set up to prevent the tyranny of the majority. Just because "most people" (insert whatever you want here) doesn't count for shit.
You haven't lied for a couple days.
Vacation? Paid / unpaid leave of absence?
They didn't finally fire you for being too obvious did they?