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Comment by 2muchcoffeeman | Hacker News Reader

>"why are we spending millions and millions on a library in the digital age?"

Because the less well off may not have enough devices or internet access to do things digitally. It's also good if you have young kids. You can't read that book which has different textures for all the animals digitally.

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> Because the less well off may not have enough devices or internet access to do things digitally.

Is that really still true? I've traveled in many poor counties where people live in shacks with no plumbing, yet still all have internet connected smartphones. Only in the most remote villages with no electricity or phone signal are people still truly disconnected.

I'd argue it's not necessarily about the devices, it's about paying to rent electronic copies of books. I'm not poor, but I find that to be a prohibitively expensive way to do any appreciable amount of reading. Especially when there is a building down the street that can get me just about any book for free.

I don't know what their data plans are like or how good their network is.

In AU, you can still get really cheap prepaid plans that don't really have a lot of data all things considered. For example, right now I can get an Amaysim SIM for $100, and you get 60GB for 365 days. https://www.amaysim.com.au/plans/long-expiry-plans/

This is roughly 165MB a day. Probably amazing compared to a poor country, but it's all relative.

In FF, incognito window, uBlock origin allowed in incognito windows: - google.com is 500kB - twitter.com is 4MB - tiktok.com is 5MB - youtube.com is 6MB - facebook.com is 300kB - Commonwealth's Netbank is 2MB

This is not even considering all the other data you need for using those websites. If your mobile phone and your mobile data is your main source of connectivity, it's really easy to blow through it all just on basic things.

The data plans in most developing countries are actually quite good.

For example, the best overall plan I've used anywhere in the world is in Thailand. You can get unlimited 10Mbit service for $5 a month. The coverage is extremely good even in the mountains or islands, latency is excellent, and I've used over 100 GB without hitting any additional throttles. And that's with AIS. There are cheaper companies and plans if you wanted.

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