Computing Around the World

How much of the world has access to the Internet?

  1. Check out InternetLiveStats.com and its list of Internet users by country. Also look at InternetWorldStats.com, which has more information about the different regions of the world.
    • For the list of countries, try re-ordering the countries according to % penetration, country's share of world population, and country's share of world Internet users.
    • Does anything surprise you in this data? For example, are you surprised by the ranking of the United States on any of these lists? Are there other countries you expected or didn't expect to see at different rankings?
    • These statistics might answer some questions, but certainly not all of them. What questions do you have about Internet usage around the world? These can include questions that are not necessarily answered very well by charts, like why? and how?
  2. The fact that some people have access to computers and the Internet and others do not leads to a "digital divide."
    JK: I'm thinking of students in these classes who don't actually have a computer at home. In ed-school-speak, I'm aware of this micro-aggression - how do we have this conversation so that students come out empowered and more hopeful rather than less?
    • In what ways does the digital divide create an unfair society?
    • What are some ways of minimizing the effects of the digital divide, both in our community and around the world?
  1. Read this article about an innovation to deliver Internet to the world.
  2. What is being done about the digital divide in the United States? Here's a government policy brief from July 2015 addressing this issue.
  3. This article ("The Shrinking Digital Divide" from TechCrunch.com, 7/12/15) talks about the impact of smartphones on the digital divide. The article raises an interesting question: If there is no content available in your language, why would you be motivated to get online?