The internet has been around for decades, emails have been around since the late 1990s and the sharing of files since the 1970s. But, most importantly, the creation of the World Wide Web in 1989 revolutionized how we communicate and access information. Now I’m not here to go all TOK on you about how the internet changes what it means to know something, but I am going to tell you about how lucky we are to have the internet.
history of the internet
Let’s go on a little history trip of the creation and development of the internet. The first website was CERN (which is still online today). Around 0.5% of the population was online in 1991, there were very few computers and even less were connected to a network. But changes happened quickly, by 2000 almost 6% of the world’s population was online, including 50% of the population of the USA. This map shows the number of internet users in 2015 as a percentage of a country’s population. Perhaps you aren’t surprised, but I know I am, France has less than 90% of its population online? An estimated 82% of the population of France was online in 2015, just under 55 million had internet access.
The map below shows the internet users as a percentage of the country's population.
internet usage in Finland
When looking at this map we can’t just focus on France, France is one of the countries with the highest percentage of internet users, but who can top the Scandinavian countries? Let’s look at Finland. Around 95% of the population is on the internet, little to no censorship (they are 11th for HDI (Human Development Index, a measure of the quality of life in any given country), 11th for GDP (nominal) per capita and most importantly, there is no homework! Who doesn’t want to live in Finland?
And in SOUTH AMERICA...
Sadly we can’t just focus on the good, the map is overwhelmingly red, orange and yellow, and areas of black, a bleak reality. South America is predominantly yellow, Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, French Guyana and Venezuela make it look a bit more positive, but only French Guyana with a population of 290,000 makes it to the 80-90% category.
And in AFRICA
My eyes focus on Africa, it’s overpowering areas of black and shades of red, with only a single light blue country. It’s sad to look at. But, we have to remember, African countries are developing at the fastest rate, which means growth of internet users will happen, and quickly. Let’s look at Namibia for example. On this map, it shows that in 2015, between 30 and 39% of the population was online, with the number being 31%, meaning around 745,000 people had internet access. By January 2020 this number reached 51%, that means an increase of over 500,000 users in 5 years. A massive increase. There’s a similar story for Egypt, in 2015, 37.8% of the population was online, this reached around 59% in January 2020, which would almost make Egypt a blue country, demonstrating that there has been significant progress.
The map below shows internet censorship and surveillance by country.
WHAT DOES THIS MAP MEAN?
We can’t just focus on the number of internet users though, we have to focus on the actual content and censorship. This map shows internet censorship and surveillance by country in 2018. Green indicates little to no, yellow means selective, the light pink means substantial and the bright pink shows extensive. Generally, the map is yellow and green, particularly in North America, South America, Africa, Australasia and Europe. Let’s have a look at France again.
FRANCe's censorship
France is green, hooray! This means that the French government does not limit what is allowed on the internet, they do block certain things, such as websites that promote terrorism, racial violence ETC. This is good, which is why we generally do not want to have zero censorship or surveillance, because then anything could be posted on the internet of that country. France is getting stricter with the hate they allow on the internet. For example, in May of this year, the National Assembly passed ‘Lutte contre la haine sur internet’. This legislation requires social media sites that operate in France to remove offending content within a day of notification, or they face fines. Terrorism must be removed within an hour or a hefty fine will be heading their way. Overall France’s laws on censorship are good, they block illegal content, terrorism and hate speech while still allowing access to everything else.
What about the bright pink countries?
However, this can not be said for all countries. China really stands out on the map with its bright pink colour. You’ve probably heard about China’s censorship and surveillance, but let me give you a quick rundown. First of all, please don’t look at internet censorship of China on your school laptop, Impero will block you from the wikipedia article. Around 2 million people govern the internet in China, as part of the ‘Great Firewall of China’. A Harvard study in 2012 found that 13% of websites are blocked in the Mainland, a number that is possibly only growing. Some of the major websites and social media include Google, Facebook, Youtube, major blogging websites, Western news sources, Instagram, Wikipedia, Skype, Snapchat, Whatsapp. Chinese companies then create equivalents of many of these sites, such as WeChat as the equivalent of Whatsapp, QQ for Facebook, Sina Weibo for Twitter, IQIYI for Netflix etc. But why does China do it? To conceal sensitive content, for social control and economic protectionism.
Sensitive content The internet has massive amounts of data that the government wish to conceal, an example of this is the Liu Xiaobo case which you can read all about here: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-40585327
Social control The Internet is one of the best platforms for freedom of speech, providing masses of free information, something which the Chinese government cannot easily regulate, and so it is easier to block websites than to try to control what information is on these websites, as the majority are not Chinese.
Economic protectionism Linking to social control, China prefers local companies that will comply with their guidelines, which is why it creates these strict rules for foreign large companies, such as Google, so they won’t comply and so China can make their own, ideal version.
And where did I get all of this information? On the internet. The internet is teaching me about itself, weird.