Saturday, January 16, 2016

What Internet?

 "The lives of the majority of the world's people remain largely untouched by the digital revolution." - The World Bank’s annual World Development Report

In the UK we spend on average 0.47% of our monthly income to run a mobile phone, while in the Democratic Republic of the Congo it's more than 50%? Or that in India, now thought of as a nascent technology superpower, more than a billion people still aren't connected to the internet?


The report talks of "information inequality", with a slower, less useful internet being offered to new users, who are then not being given the skills to make good use of the technology. It points to the fact that there are more contributions to Wikipedia from Hong Kong than from all of Africa, despite the fact that there are 50 times as many African internet users. IT is generating fewer jobs in developing countries than in the wealthy nations - 1% of the workforce on average, compared with 3-5% in OECD countries.

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