The Economy of Ideas #24:
A Village of 100
by Daniel Erasmus
It is a sobering experience to be put into place. I spend my life talking about how the Internet will change everything and sometimes I loose perspective of the harsh reality of the world.
If we took the all the people in the world, keeping the ratios the same and shrunk it to a village of a hundred people. Thirteen people would come from Europe, thirteen from the Americas and thirteen from Africa. The remaining 61 people would come from Asia.
The village is a young village with 48 people under 25 years of age. Twenty-three people survive on less than a dollar a day, by begging, hunting, growing their own vegetables- what ever it takes.
Growing your vegetables and other long term activities is not an option for fifteen people who lumber though the village in a daze, as they are constantly hungry. Most of them literally do not know when they will eat again. 18 people do not have access to safe drinking water and are chronically ill as a result of this. Not surprisingly the poorest twenty people in the village have only one percent of the total wealth.
In contrast 50% of the wealth of the village is in the hands of 5 people.
Speaking about tele-communication thirty four people has a phone in their home, yet half the people in the village have never made a phone call. There are 1.2 billion television sets in the world which would make an estimate of 60 TV viewers in our village. Almost half the village or 40 people watch Baywatch every week.
How many people have access to the Internet? Two. It is a network of two people. These two people are religiously sending their e-mails, surfing the web and talking very seriously about electronic commerce.
As much revolutionary, deep and long lasting changes information and communication technologies promise, the Internet has not made an iota difference to 98% of the world. For them nothing has changed.
The promise of this technology still has a long way to go before it delivers.
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Copyright 1998 Daniel Erasmus, The Digital Thinking Network
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