Relevant to questions 12 through 18 on the survey taken at our first class meeting:
(The following information is taken verbatim from the website of Frontline, PBS October 2002.)
Global digital divide
- The United States has more computers than the rest of the world combined.
- Eighty-eight percent of all Internet users are in industrialized nations, yet those countries only have 15 percent of the world's population.
- Less than 5 percent of computers connected to the Internet are in developing countries.
- Internet users in Africa and West Asia together account for just 1 percent of people connected online.
- While poor countries have about 1.4 telephone lines per 100 people, the industrialized world has nearly 50 telephone lines for every 100 people.
- Tokyo has more telephone lines than all of Africa, while more than half of the world's population has yet to make a telephone call.
- Eight of 10 Web sites are in English, a language understood by only one in 10 people on the planet.
Sources: CIA Worldfactbook; World Bank Country Report: India; Census of India 2001; United Nations World Employment Report 2001; United Nations Human Development Report; Population Resource Center; U.S. Internet Council; India Ministry of Commerce and Industry; Marshall School of Business at University of Southern California; International Telecommunications Union; BBC Online News; Asiaweek.com.