While the rest of us get to add “wide web,” one in three people live only in the world
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OK, let me explain. Tim Berners-Lee, the guy that invented the World Wide Web, has just published a web index that shows, of all the people in the world, only one in three connect to the web. That number grows to one in six, when looking specifically at Africa. The BBC breaks the index down:
It highlighted censorship and high broadband prices as barriers to a “web for all”.
Using data from the past five years, it scored nations in seven different categories.
These were: communications infrastructure – the state and availability of web-enabling infrastructure; institutional infrastructure – education, laws, regulation and censorship; web content – what relevant and useful content is available; web use – the extent to which the web is used in a country; political impact; economic impact and social impact.
Overall, the U.S. ranked No. 2 on the index, behind Sweden and in front of the U.K. We’re number two! We’re number two! Iceland, it turns out, is the most connected with 95 percent of its population logging on, while Yemen scraped the bottom “in three categories, including social and economic impact of the web.” Again from the BBC:
According to the index, 30% of countries face moderate to severe government restrictions on access to websites, while about half of them show increasing threats to press freedom. “The web is a global conversation. Growing suppression of free speech, both online and offline, is possibly the single biggest challenge to the future of the web,” warned Sir Tim
61 countries were surveyed for the index, and besides location, one of the main barriers to going online is still price. According to Berners-Lee, “broadband connections still cost almost half of monthly income per capita.”
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