

Ask HN: How would the world change if everyone could afford/use the internet? - Sophi13

I&#x27;m working in the domain of &#x27;Connecting the Unconnected&#x27; i.e: working to bring the 4.3 billion unconnected online. Just wondering about your take on how the world would change, if at all, if everyone was connected to the internet.
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linuskendall
Have you worked extensively with the "unconnected"?

Sometimes, people might not be as unconnected as you think. To give you an
example from the urban environment, I've seen download kiosks where somebody
with a computer will download music videos and songs and then install them on
memory cards for squatters, street vendors (living next to/in their stalls)
and others that might nominally be seen as unconnected.

In other instances, "connection to the Internet" might look very different
than one would assume. For many of the rural residents of the 4.3 bn you
mention, the Internet is meaningless unless there are the types of
applications that these people are interested in and/or in need of. They are
not blessed with the potential for leisurely media consumption nor are they
skilled to access information and / or modalities of use provided primarily
for literate audiences.

I hope when you speak of connecting the unconnected you are not thinking of
providing pipes of bandwidth or even new consumer devices? That has been tried
and is clearly not the way forward. Rather building services that specifically
target the needs as well as limitations faced by "the unconnected" seem a much
more viable proposition - perhaps working with (and not reinventing or
innovating around) the modalities already being developed, such as the
"download kiosks" mentioned above.

First and foremost, though, I hope you are spending plenty of time with the
unconnected when developing this idea.

~~~
Sophi13
I could not agree more when you say that building services which target the
needs/limitations faced by the unconnected is the way forward rather than just
expanding the infrastructure, and it's refreshing to see someone realize that.
It's not just about making the internet available, it's also about teaching
the unconnected 'how' to use it (I feel the UX layer of the internet may be
broken for the unconnected) And even more important to teach them 'why' (i.e:
a farmer in some developing rural area might not really care to connect with
friends via social networks or download music, however, teaching him how to
check the weather online, might just bump his livelihood up a few notches.)
The word here I guess is 'relevance'. Yes, I have been working on digital
literacy with under privileged people, we have also been running extensive
usability tests to help understand how the unconnected interact with basic
internet services, however, I feel there is a lot more to be discovered about
the dynamics of this completely untapped demographic.

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butwhy
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=768h3Tz4Qik](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=768h3Tz4Qik)

