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On a similar note, people seem to think that internet access will magically allow people to lift themselves out of poverty in developing countries. I personally

On a similar note, people seem to think that internet access will magically allow people to lift themselves out of poverty in developing countries. I personally find this idea to be pretty stupid; just because you have the sum total of the world's knowledge available to you (a paraphrased quote from the article) does not mean you are going to do anything with it or you can do anything with it.

flohofwoe 11y ago
Probably not for the majority, but for the people who want to learn new stuff the internet is invaluable. I learned programming as a kid in the 80's, and the amount of time I spent only with finding and obtaining information is mind-boggling. Even in the early 90's if you wanted to get the official OS documentation for e.g. the Amiga you had to order them as several kilograms of dead tree from the States.
- sulam 11y ago
  So, 15 years ago I traveled to Senegal to help evaluate how the Internet could be useful to them, economically speaking. Before my trip, I was imagining things much like you're describing here. What I saw on my trip was fairly eye-opening. First of all, in much of the country basic services like electricity and running water cannot be taken for granted. Phone service is available -- for a price paid by the minute to some equivalent of a local entrepreneur who has invested money into getting a mobile phone plan and has some means of charging / powering the equipment (solar was the typical method, although I saw more primitive techniques as well). Internet access was generally many miles away in a regional capital, which is probably an all day trip for someone walking or on a horse (cars are for the wealthy). When you get there, access is very expensive. I'm assuming things have gotten better in the last 15 years. For instance mobile phone penetration was already dramatic when I visited and can only have improved since then. However literacy was a serious problem -- you have to be able to read in order to make sense of almost anything on a computer, and in Senegal at least just knowing French is an elite signifier since most speak Wolof. Very few people were fluent English speakers -- I effectively had to learn pidgin French just to have conversations with the local telecom employees, although thankfully most Internet-specific technical terms were just directly taken from English. In Dakar (the capital city) things were very different. It was pretty much what I imagined a typical city in Africa to be like -- and Internet access there was still expensive but in the realm of affordable. University students got some sort of access that was reasonable, although the pipe out of the country was pitifully small at the time (we had more bandwidth for our office than the whole country had in 2001). The really interesting thing was that no one could figure out how to make money off Internet access other than Internet cafes and connecting people to the very large number of Senegalese who live outside the country. I imagine the remittance market is huge now. However things have changed, it almost certainly hinges on the extreme motivation people there have to better their lives. They will move heaven and earth to make a buck -- SV entrepreneurs could learn a lot from the drive on display everywhere I went. If you can imagine a way to make money from a situation, they were way ahead of you. One last thing -- Senegal is considered one of the African success stories, generally speaking. It is relatively democratic, has a growing economy (without all the problems that come with having oil deposits) and has been the recipient of decades of development funding. Many countries in Africa are worse off than Senegal, and I would imagine the snapshot I got in 2001 looks like utopia to them now.
  - eru 11y ago
    Thanks for the write up!
eru 11y ago
Oh, just getting current market prices from the neighbouring towns can be invaluable for the farmers to decide where and when to sell their goods. Mobile phones without internet already work well for that.
prodmerc 11y ago
It's not magical for sure, people still need to put in a lot of effort, but having access to vast knowledge can definitely help. We can learn anything online, and I can't count how many times the Internet has helped me with normal everyday life: proper ceiling painting, good electrical wiring practices, fixing up an engine, properly cutting glass, mixing cement for various applications, more effective gardening, food recipes, building a solar water heater and integrating it with the existing hot water system (awesome summer savings), and more... But yeah, people need to apply these things. Another obstacle is that all this information is only available in select languages, mostly English, so the first thing everyone needs to learn is English AND to share the information in their own language (which they often simply refuse to do because why would they share these advantages with other people? Now that is a stupid mindset...)

flohofwoe 11y ago

Probably not for the majority, but for the people who want to learn new stuff the internet is invaluable. I learned programming as a kid in the 80's, and the amount of time I spent only with finding and obtaining information is mind-boggling. Even in the early 90's if you wanted to get the official OS documentation for e.g. the Amiga you had to order them as several kilograms of dead tree from the States.

sulam 11y ago
So, 15 years ago I traveled to Senegal to help evaluate how the Internet could be useful to them, economically speaking. Before my trip, I was imagining things much like you're describing here. What I saw on my trip was fairly eye-opening. First of all, in much of the country basic services like electricity and running water cannot be taken for granted. Phone service is available -- for a price paid by the minute to some equivalent of a local entrepreneur who has invested money into getting a mobile phone plan and has some means of charging / powering the equipment (solar was the typical method, although I saw more primitive techniques as well). Internet access was generally many miles away in a regional capital, which is probably an all day trip for someone walking or on a horse (cars are for the wealthy). When you get there, access is very expensive. I'm assuming things have gotten better in the last 15 years. For instance mobile phone penetration was already dramatic when I visited and can only have improved since then. However literacy was a serious problem -- you have to be able to read in order to make sense of almost anything on a computer, and in Senegal at least just knowing French is an elite signifier since most speak Wolof. Very few people were fluent English speakers -- I effectively had to learn pidgin French just to have conversations with the local telecom employees, although thankfully most Internet-specific technical terms were just directly taken from English. In Dakar (the capital city) things were very different. It was pretty much what I imagined a typical city in Africa to be like -- and Internet access there was still expensive but in the realm of affordable. University students got some sort of access that was reasonable, although the pipe out of the country was pitifully small at the time (we had more bandwidth for our office than the whole country had in 2001). The really interesting thing was that no one could figure out how to make money off Internet access other than Internet cafes and connecting people to the very large number of Senegalese who live outside the country. I imagine the remittance market is huge now. However things have changed, it almost certainly hinges on the extreme motivation people there have to better their lives. They will move heaven and earth to make a buck -- SV entrepreneurs could learn a lot from the drive on display everywhere I went. If you can imagine a way to make money from a situation, they were way ahead of you. One last thing -- Senegal is considered one of the African success stories, generally speaking. It is relatively democratic, has a growing economy (without all the problems that come with having oil deposits) and has been the recipient of decades of development funding. Many countries in Africa are worse off than Senegal, and I would imagine the snapshot I got in 2001 looks like utopia to them now.
- eru 11y ago
  Thanks for the write up!

eru 11y ago

Oh, just getting current market prices from the neighbouring towns can be invaluable for the farmers to decide where and when to sell their goods. Mobile phones without internet already work well for that.

prodmerc 11y ago

It's not magical for sure, people still need to put in a lot of effort, but having access to vast knowledge can definitely help. We can learn anything online, and I can't count how many times the Internet has helped me with normal everyday life: proper ceiling painting, good electrical wiring practices, fixing up an engine, properly cutting glass, mixing cement for various applications, more effective gardening, food recipes, building a solar water heater and integrating it with the existing hot water system (awesome summer savings), and more... But yeah, people need to apply these things. Another obstacle is that all this information is only available in select languages, mostly English, so the first thing everyone needs to learn is English AND to share the information in their own language (which they often simply refuse to do because why would they share these advantages with other people? Now that is a stupid mindset...)