Internet uptake has accelerated during the pandemic
itu.int
itu.int
Because the statement is technically true, but basically meaningless... Cars don't need to exist, modern medicine doesn't need to exist, electric lightbulbs don't need to exist. But they all provide conveniences and functionality that most people seem to appreciate, and would not be willing to part with.
No you could say, because you don't use it at home and you use an appliance. But then is your grandma using the internet, because she uses a bunch of appliances, too? And someone who uses the internet through an internet cafe, something very common in some asian countries, wouldn't be "using" it either as they are not at home.
Basically all modern cars built in the last 5 years send telemetry data back to their manufacturers. Is driving a Mercedes EQS/Tesla usage of the internet?
Drove a sedan from 2008. Had over 150k miles on it. Still drives fine, next owner might be able to get another 50k miles from it.
When it doesn’t work I can see what’s wrong by looking at it, and can fix it myself with cheap parts that are available everywhere. It’s cost me €200 in maintenance in the last three years.
Conversely I stupidly bought a 2016 truck last year and just sent it to be scrapped, as it has been absolutely nothing but trouble, has cost me about €8,000 to repeatedly repair, and it then still needed a new engine, computer, and gearbox - I’ve driven it maybe 100km and it just keeps falling apart.
They’re getting seriously good at the planned obsolescence bit.
I only have 300,000 miles, so you win on mileage.
Im not sure a person using an internet connected ATM would count, or a person who uses the internet in some form at work but does not have a broadband connection at home etc
If you count indirect usage, I suspect the figure is much higher - ie do we really believe that c13% of Europe manages to get through a month without using the internet in any form? I’m a bit sceptical on this data as it appears to be poorly explained in terms of methodology (and some is even just forecast through a model).
It's true that it's possible to live without access to the Network, people did up until the Treaty of Bern (in 1874) - it is also possible to live without access to electricity, or fresh water and people did that too, they're still utilities.
https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/drinking-wa...
Instead of becoming an instrument to strengthen freedom, it actually weakens it and promotes domination and inequality.
read this.
now, i have family members who are "glued" to their "insta". constantly swiping up, laughing, "see this, see this", meh, "oh cool, nice", sharing on whatspp.
rinse and repeat. i don't know how that feels like. i personally do not use whatsapp or telegram so i am somewhat shielded by the whole sharing culture. neither i use instagram or facebook for some reason. i'd rather spend my time window shopping on libby, granted that is becoming a small minority but still...
the amount of absurd BS peddled on instagram and tiktok is staggering. like you have endless supply of videos sharing health benefits of ginger and for the next week your family tells you about ginger and balding, weight loss, weight gain, kidney stones, heart health, brain power, on and on.
next week its chia seeds, then nigela seeds. There was a time i hear when astrology was seen as harmless, now, not so much because your insta astrologer can make you do stupid stuff for "cosmic alignment" and its all like farming.
i have a question. When discussion on peertube comes up, "creators" cry "well, youtube gives me ad revenue so why bother" but those same people and more than them spend considerable time on instagram and tiktok without any cash earnings so why is that acceptable that time ?
take the example of online gambling. people bet like anything today. we have dozens of "he won 1 crore today, wish i had won the same. let me try to do this tomorrow". the argument is, "well, no money is changing hands. we are not handing out money with our hands. that is haram. this is just taking money from our accounts and getting back some. we aren't touching anything".. i have genuinely heard this argument the other day and my mind was blown at that time. my point is, people are milking the gullible for profit and justifying it.
You’re right I needed to sit down for that one.
enjoy
Hell, you can just look around HN to see that a formal education/"culture consumption" doesn't stop people from falling into messy baseless conspiracy theories. And a lot of people confuse "disagreeing with me/having different foundational truths" with "being wrong" no matter how much Foucault they've read.
I think a lot of what people take as indicators of lack of judgement or skills to handle information are more often just indicators of those who have little or no trust in the institutions or its messengers.
Perhaps the parent post sounded harsh but there's nothing elitist in acknowledging that billions of people lack access to good education (and food, water, etc). It's not their fault and nothing shameful.
> And a lot of people confuse "disagreeing with me/having different foundational truths" with "being wrong" no matter how much Foucault they've read.
HN is known to be an echo chamber, and also no amount of education is a silver bullet. But learning critical thinking (including reading Foucault) does wonders.
Unfortunately a lot of "formal education", especially around STEM, is focusing more and more around the "how" and less about the "why".
I don't agree with this, other communication mechanisms can be more easily controlled for propaganda purposes and can completely exclude contrary information.
The idea that "access to information is bad because some information is wrong" is very popular but there's not much to it other than elitism and a desire for control over others.
When radio and television started to make inroads into public life in many developed country they benefited from a lot of reasonably curated, even cultural programs ran as a public services.
In many countries national television did a lot to provide bits of education to adults, encourage adoption of the national language, learn about other cultures and so on.
What is really bad on the Internet is that many websites and services benefit from misleading content, ignorant comments, conspiracy theories, and so on.
Reminds me of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September
But perhaps it's not so bad: when the level of misinformation is high enough (e.g. on platforms like tiktok) most people learn quickly to be skeptical.
I think those fears are overblown and mostly class-motivated in any case.
For someone who is taking the high ground on this topic, this is a strange topic. I'm pretty sure there are more TVs on my street than there are refrigerators; we only have one fridge but have >1 tv for example.
Everything you've written is a middle class construct that doesn't exist on either---extreme---end of the class spectrum. These abstract constructs posit that there can be facts, truths, and "good" -- when the reality is that all the forces behind everything that impacts us are human in nature.
We're all working to push our agendas, and reach our own ends (almost always unconsciously or unaware of the deeper reasons).
So long as you keep off-loading all of your thinking and decision-making to others (in this case, the other would be Platonian woo-woo aether concepts), you're instigating the proliferation of middle class "intellectual" propaganda, and further widening the rift between you and the lower classes (one could even say, you're building a moat, because you're pushing the upper classes even further away).
Acess to information is life changing, if internet didn't appear I would probably be wondering how to make it till the next pay roll with no perspectives for life lol
On the other hand amount of propaganda and stuff is scary too, so you gotta have strong internet(web) hygiene
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29510823
It is not propaganda as such, but the comments highlight how such statements can be problematic.
So it's definitely harder to know what you can trust on the internet.
The internet allows you to target those 2 groups separately, and tailor your message to the audience. You don't even need to pay any gatekeepers; just join the right Facebook groups (whose membership will already be very helpfully divided by ideology, class etc. for you), and start posting.
You could replicate it partially by putting different messages in different newspapers, but not with the granularity we have now.
Maybe he was just ahead of the time and just predicting future...
From novels to games to movies... and facebook conspiracy posts.
Reminds me of when wikipedia was young, and everyone was worried people would trust articles at face value.
Feel free to consider this a bet to come back to.
Cell phones, for example, are widely used in developing nations. Tech in general has been the best at reducing costs over time compared to things like food and energy which haven't really fallen in price.
€600 for an entire village/favela/whatever else to have some form of internet sounds fairly reasonable in the early 21st century. And prices will surely go down over the next few years.
That said, given the base station is currently sold below cost, it may take quite a while to get cheap.
Even in OECD countries, 26% of people aged 16-65 failed a test designed to gauge computer skills because they couldn’t use a computer at all:
Being too polite to use a term like “level zero,” the OECD researchers refer to the lowest skill level as “below level 1.”
…
An example of task at this level is “Delete this email message” in an email app."""
That 26% I described? They were below even the “Below Level 1” level.
My assumption is that in younger ages, (millennials and younger genz folks), it will be 90% world wide.
How do you measure use?
>[1] See “Methodology” for information about how estimates were produced
The internet is not the (world wide) web. It is actually referring to the underlying infrastructure. The web, email, streaming services, VoIP, ... are working on top/using the internet.
The introductory paragraph of Wikipedia actually includes this differentiation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet
After reading the methodology section of the submitted page, I am still unsure whether the survey actually uses the terms internet and world wide web synonymously or not.
Just like CULTURE.
Sometimes you have to DIVIDE before it's safe to MULTIPLY.