>I believe most fervantly that the internet supplies the means to
>organise politically on a much more sophistocated, multi-lateral and
>democractic self-education basis, but the technology itself needs
>much improvement.
***** October 04, 2001
No technofix for the Third World
By Sean Healy
...In the high-income member-countries of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, 28.2% of people are internet users; in the US, it's even higher, at 54.3%. But in East Asia and the Pacific, it's 2.3%, in the Arab states it's 0.6%, in sub-Saharan Africa, it's 0.4%.
The OECD, home to 19% of the world's population, is home to 79% of the world's internet users....
... The telephone was invented a century ago. But today, while there is one mainline connection for every two people in the OECD, in the Third World, there's only one mainline connection for every fifteen people. In the least developed countries, there is only one for every 200 people. Most people on the planet have never made or received a phone call.
Electric power generation and grid delivery were first available in 1831 and, in the First World, electricity is now so universal that no-one even thinks about where it comes from. But electricity has not reached some two billion people, a third of the world's population. In 1998, per capita electricity consumption in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa was less than one-tenth what it was in OECD countries....
<http://www.zmag.org/sustainers/content/2001-10%5C04healy.cfm> ***** -- Yoshie
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