The Rate at Which the World is Getting Online Has Fallen Sharply Since 2015, New Report Suggests (theguardian.com) 68
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 The striking trend, described in an unpublished report shared with the Guardian, shows the rate at which the world is getting online has fallen sharply since 2015, with women and the rural poor substantially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."
Not necessarily a bad thing (Score:2, Insightful)
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...
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-1? Why? Did the truth make some vewwy shpeshul snowflakes cry?
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I think it was -1 because it was just misinformed ranting, because you were just pointing out only a small portion on what is online vs its whole. Get off Facebook and the mainstream sites, there is a whole internet with more info and usefulness.
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As you post this online.
I expect it the rate decline, is for the most part internet is accessible to the world now, nothing about the content on what is on it.
We are at a point where anyone who wants to be online is online, it isn't something that people are striving to get.
Back when I was a Kid, The "internet" was just across some universities, and government R&D. By the time I was a teenager, it was mostly just for Colleges and Universities, with some businesses using it for email. Some BBS's were u
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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...
It's still incredibly valuable to me. Any question I have about programming or most other tech questions, even incredibly obscure topics, are more than likely to be found and answered. I stream my entertainment on-demand these days, both video and videogames. All shopping is done online, except for grocery shopping, and that may even change someday too. Instant communication with anyone in the world at any time. And those are just my everyday benefits.
Am I being exploited here? Certainly I have privac
Fewer Anonymous Cowards, then. Great. (Score:2)
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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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Re:low hanging fruit (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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I should have said, a 3% linear increase in the percentage of world populalation online.
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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 like when they say the rate of cell phone adoption has decreased. It's because everyone has one.
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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?
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So it's yet another 80/20 problem?
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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.
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Culture. Some cultures don't allow women to do much other than cook food and make babies.
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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.
Two things (Score:1)
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
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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.
Good, take the dark web with you (Score:2)
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Sorry, but no. Here's how it works: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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Maybe people that are concentrating on finding tonight's dinner have no time and aren't interested in watching Cat Videos.
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Looks like someone's ordering a DDoS stress test of his webpage...
Duh? (Score:1)
"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?
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Comment removed (Score:3)
How is the slowdown distributed? (Score:3)
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.
The internet: a benefit, or a hazard? (Score:1)
If you're in extreme poverty, does internet access really help your situation any?
Basic Math/Science. Try it. (Score:2, Interesting)
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.
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Yes... Or more formally known as the Logistic Equation.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
RC networks considered difficult (Score:2)
Somebody hand these morons a capacitor, a resistor, a battery, and an oscilloscope.
Or even just a common cellphone, already charged to 90%