A Connected World?
Links :
https://www.internet.org/about
http://money.cnn.com/2015/10/13/technology/most-of-the-world-is-offline/index.html
We have been learning a lot about how connected the world has become with the advancements in technology and the introduction of the internet. What essentially started as a means to reach a number of universities to share research information, has grown far beyond what those first “internet” users could have possibly imagined. The internet has allowed us to reach across the globe in less than a second and talk to people we would never have been able to reach. However, we still have a long ways to go if we want to truly create a “connected world”.
According to United Nations Broadband Commission, there are 4.2 billion people offline. More than 50% of the world still lives without internet or has very limited access to it. From language barriers to socioeconomic disparities, there are a number of reasons why such a large portion of the world have never had the means or willingness to invest their time into this growing network of people. According the CNN article linked above, we could increase the usability of the internet by 80% by adding only 40 more languages. Currently the internet is dominated by the “A-Z” alphabet and the number system using the symbols “0-9” which limits many users from understanding the majority of the websites circulating through the internet. Added to the symbolic drawbacks, most of the internet is currently English-based.
Mark Zuckerberg has created an organization with the sole purpose of creating a more connected word. The organization is called internet.org with a website in the link above. He hopes to make the internet affordable and available to anyone who wishes to connect to it. The Connectivity Lab at Facebook is working on ideas about using drones and long range satellites that would allow internet to be broadcasted and available to remote areas of the world. Another project is the Free Basic Services that would offer free internet services such as health, employment, and local information to those with an internet connection. This would draw more people to the internet and give practical uses to the internet where many saw it to be unnecessary.
The hope of being able to have a connected world was once impossible, but now very well within the realm of possibility. We currently can only claim to be connected to 1/3 of the rest of the world and we have already achieved so many incredible things. The information flowing around the world is immeasurable and we are missing 2/3 of it. If we can offer internet on a global scale, then we can truly claim to be “connected” to the rest of the world.