3 ms·

It’s always so interesting to me that we already saw this happen - look no further than China - and they became oligapolized even more than the west. Centraliz

by RC_ITR 4y ago

It’s always so interesting to me that we already saw this happen - look no further than China - and they became oligapolized even more than the west. Centralization works. You may not like it and you hope that developing world won’t either, but WhatsApps success sort of invalidates all your points. Countries are fine handing over nearly all their data to whatever platform works best, because who wants less than the best?

spaceman_2020 4y ago
It's not a problem yet because for much of the developing world, large scale internet adoption is a very recent phenomenon. And the leadership in most of these countries is still non tech savvy. There has simply not been enough time for the people or their leadership/bureaucracies to figure out what the long-term impact of this technoloy will be. India, for instance, had 250M internet users in 2015. That number is now nearly a billion. In nearly 25 years of the commercial internet, India could only bring 250M people online. Then it brought another 750M online in the span of just 7 years. For the bulk of India's online population, the internet is still a novelty. A prime minister elected in 2014 - who claimed to be "tech savvy" - was 58 when the iPhone was released - not exactly an age where you "get" new technology immediately. Now fast forward to 2032. A 65 year old prime ministerial candidate would have spent 22 years of his/her life in the smartphone world. The bulk of the population would have a decade's worth of experience of the digital world. Their understanding of the problems, risks, security issues, etc. would be far better. Already, the Indian government has announced plans to create its own mobile app store after protests by entrepreneurs against Google's app store fees. This is only going to increase moving forward.
- pwinnski 4y ago
  We've seen countries moving online for may years now, and the move up the scale in economic prosperity always seems to be more of a factor than the actual technical savvy. Haiti could build an App Store, but they'd have trouble attracting developers for the fractional pennies they could charge for apps. The government of my garden shed has announced plans to create its own mobile App Store, too, but so far uptake has been minimal. The move toward viable alternatives takes time, and the seven years you've allocated doesn't seem like nearly enough. 2030 is as far from now as we are from 2015, and things haven't changed nearly as much in the last seven years as you seem to be predicting they will in the next seven years. Past performance is no guarantee of future results... but they're an indicator.

by RC_ITR 4y ago

spaceman_2020 4y ago

It's not a problem yet because for much of the developing world, large scale internet adoption is a very recent phenomenon. And the leadership in most of these countries is still non tech savvy. There has simply not been enough time for the people or their leadership/bureaucracies to figure out what the long-term impact of this technoloy will be. India, for instance, had 250M internet users in 2015. That number is now nearly a billion. In nearly 25 years of the commercial internet, India could only bring 250M people online. Then it brought another 750M online in the span of just 7 years. For the bulk of India's online population, the internet is still a novelty. A prime minister elected in 2014 - who claimed to be "tech savvy" - was 58 when the iPhone was released - not exactly an age where you "get" new technology immediately. Now fast forward to 2032. A 65 year old prime ministerial candidate would have spent 22 years of his/her life in the smartphone world. The bulk of the population would have a decade's worth of experience of the digital world. Their understanding of the problems, risks, security issues, etc. would be far better. Already, the Indian government has announced plans to create its own mobile app store after protests by entrepreneurs against Google's app store fees. This is only going to increase moving forward.

pwinnski 4y ago
We've seen countries moving online for may years now, and the move up the scale in economic prosperity always seems to be more of a factor than the actual technical savvy. Haiti could build an App Store, but they'd have trouble attracting developers for the fractional pennies they could charge for apps. The government of my garden shed has announced plans to create its own mobile App Store, too, but so far uptake has been minimal. The move toward viable alternatives takes time, and the seven years you've allocated doesn't seem like nearly enough. 2030 is as far from now as we are from 2015, and things haven't changed nearly as much in the last seven years as you seem to be predicting they will in the next seven years. Past performance is no guarantee of future results... but they're an indicator.