Accessing the Internet

Amongst the greatest hurdles for the development, innovation, and implementation of technology globally is access and connectivity. Simply put, if you can’t get online, you’re excluded from the digital world and cannot reap any of its benefits.

In its simplest form, this could mean that one simply doesn’t have access to the requisite essentials for connectivity: a computer, a modem, Ethernet or other wireless card, and a working connection to the internet.

To some extent the theme of connectivity and its impact on development has been explored in a similar vein by Iqbal Quadir, founder of GrameenPhone, a company that enables micro-loans for mobile phones to assist indigent Bangladeshis to get phone access. The Company was founded with the realization that the Bangladeshi economy was missing out on economic growth because of a lack of communication amongst those that represent the “bottom of the pyramid” in Bangladesh. You can view Iqbal Quadir’s talk at the TED conference here – definitely worth seeing.

Now that’s just the phone, the internet however in its most robust form represents far more than simply being able to make a phone call in terms of representing its economic impact upon developing economies.

Access to the internet is greater than just having the requisite technology to get online.

Amongst the greatest hurdles for internet access is literacy. The language of the internet, and as such of the digital revolution, is indisputably English. This gating factor has a significant impact upon the global South, where literacy even in native tongues is no where near as high as it should be.

In addition to basic literacy, then there is the issue of technology or internet literacy. While a user in the developing world may be able to get online and be proficient in English, does not mean that the user will have the same internet “know-how” as a user in the West, especially as it relates to the latest and newer developments in internet technologies. For example, we should not expect users in the South to necessarily know or be familiar with what Facebook applications are. Users may be well acquainted with social-networking and even Facebook, but the understanding and use of newer technologies remains behind (primarily in the area of what are commonly grouped as web 2.0 technologies). Although, that gap will soon be filled with time as users form the South grow increasingly web competent, it would be naïve to expect users from the South to be as internet savvy as their counterparts in the North.

To summarize briefly, fundamentally, there are three factors to access (not exhaustive):

1. Connectivity
2. Language literacy
3. Technology / Internet literacy

In America and Western Europe there is no shortage of paid or free wi-fi hotspots. In Jordan, last week, I visited over 7 hotspots, paid and free, to gain access to the internet. I visited both the high-end Western hotels, restaurants and cafes, every single one of them was down. Whether or not that was a function of colossally bad luck – I’m sure it was – is in some ways irrelevant, when examining connectivity. If users can’t get online, they are left behind. While acknowledging the internet culture – if I can even use such a term in Jordan – is vastly different than in America or Europe, as most users in Jordan get online either at internet cafes or at home, it is a larger indicator that the internet is not nearly as significant in this part of the world as it is elsewhere.

As such, my posts for the next few days will be intermittent given my lack of fixed connectivity.

Petra, Jordan
August 28, 2007