I'm working in the domain of 'Connecting the Unconnected' i.e: working to bring the 4.3 billion unconnected online. Just wondering about your take on how the world would change, if at all, if everyone was connected to the internet.
Have you worked extensively with the "unconnected"?
Sometimes, people might not be as unconnected as you think. To give you an example from the urban environment, I've seen download kiosks where somebody with a computer will download music videos and songs and then install them on memory cards for squatters, street vendors (living next to/in their stalls) and others that might nominally be seen as unconnected.
In other instances, "connection to the Internet" might look very different than one would assume. For many of the rural residents of the 4.3 bn you mention, the Internet is meaningless unless there are the types of applications that these people are interested in and/or in need of. They are not blessed with the potential for leisurely media consumption nor are they skilled to access information and / or modalities of use provided primarily for literate audiences.
I hope when you speak of connecting the unconnected you are not thinking of providing pipes of bandwidth or even new consumer devices? That has been tried and is clearly not the way forward. Rather building services that specifically target the needs as well as limitations faced by "the unconnected" seem a much more viable proposition - perhaps working with (and not reinventing or innovating around) the modalities already being developed, such as the "download kiosks" mentioned above.
First and foremost, though, I hope you are spending plenty of time with the unconnected when developing this idea.
I could not agree more when you say that building services which target the needs/limitations faced by the unconnected is the way forward rather than just expanding the infrastructure, and it's refreshing to see someone realize that. It's not just about making the internet available, it's also about teaching the unconnected 'how' to use it (I feel the UX layer of the internet may be broken for the unconnected) And even more important to teach them 'why' (i.e: a farmer in some developing rural area might not really care to connect with friends via social networks or download music, however, teaching him how to check the weather online, might just bump his livelihood up a few notches.) The word here I guess is 'relevance'.
Yes, I have been working on digital literacy with under privileged people, we have also been running extensive usability tests to help understand how the unconnected interact with basic internet services, however, I feel there is a lot more to be discovered about the dynamics of this completely untapped demographic.
Sometimes, people might not be as unconnected as you think. To give you an example from the urban environment, I've seen download kiosks where somebody with a computer will download music videos and songs and then install them on memory cards for squatters, street vendors (living next to/in their stalls) and others that might nominally be seen as unconnected.
In other instances, "connection to the Internet" might look very different than one would assume. For many of the rural residents of the 4.3 bn you mention, the Internet is meaningless unless there are the types of applications that these people are interested in and/or in need of. They are not blessed with the potential for leisurely media consumption nor are they skilled to access information and / or modalities of use provided primarily for literate audiences.
I hope when you speak of connecting the unconnected you are not thinking of providing pipes of bandwidth or even new consumer devices? That has been tried and is clearly not the way forward. Rather building services that specifically target the needs as well as limitations faced by "the unconnected" seem a much more viable proposition - perhaps working with (and not reinventing or innovating around) the modalities already being developed, such as the "download kiosks" mentioned above.
First and foremost, though, I hope you are spending plenty of time with the unconnected when developing this idea.