Smartphones

This started as a post about internet.org and Net Neutrality and got me starting to question why we are fucking up our second big chance in 100 years to make the world a whole lot better for far more people.

The promise of the current technology revolution [computing + internet] was the possibility of decentralised (democratised/meritocratic?) production with cheap distribution.

That future is disappearing into a future filled with consumers.

I say this because the smartphone (or some version of it) is seemingly the device of the present and future for the human species and the smartphone is a consumption device. The smartphone is good for liking, getting notifications, reading (but only a little bit), watching and swiping. The smartphone is not good for writing, producing, creating — the PC is the computing platform for creation.

But all the current writing and talking about the internet seems to come from two movements in particular:

Net Neutrality from the Media
The roll-out of internet access from Economic Development Organisations

But the razor focus on these two elements means that the conversations about access to the tools of creation are drowned out. (This is understandable — most of the advocates for the internet are producers, or represent the interests of producers)

That’s the mistake the World Bank makes in their recent publication , as you can see in the image below, they are consumption-only focused.

For the internet to work for everyone, however, we need to have a focus on both side of the equation — both consumption and production. For us to have an open internet, in the broadest sense of the word — for everyone to benefit from this technology boom — we need three things;

internet access (Network Roll-out)
unbiased distribution (Net Neutrality, but how does Net Neutrality relate to apps? — probably need something added about merit-based discovery to this?)
equal opportunity for production

This is the open-internet trifecta.

You can see that only focussing on the first two creates a system where the majority of people are excluded from creating with the internet because the majority of people don’t have access to the tools of production.

Unless this changes we will be left with another system where there will be an extraction from the global south to the global north, with a few (but not more than that) exceptions. Those that will largely profit are the already rich — you can see them on the maps below.

PC users with red being the most, green the least. Source: http://www.targetmap.com/viewer.aspx?reportId=27348

Github Users. Source: http://bl.ocks.org/syntagmatic/6769077

Wikipedia contributors. Source: http://phys.org/news/2014-09-global-contributions-wikipedia-unequal.html#nRlv

Don’t be conned by comparisons like the one below from the World Bank that try to imply that the internet is making the world more equal, because without access to the tools of production, the world will continue becoming more unequal.

Source: https://medium.com/world-of-opportunity/digital-revolution-needs-offline-help-to-realize-its-potential-bdf9263dbf5d

This is the next technological revolution and it’s about to explode. But once again the revolution will favour the few because to produce software you need three things (that aren’t mutually exclusive);

a PC
knowledge
the internet.

And when we go to tick these off — PC’s seem to be the issue. Access to information is cheaper than ever and some of it is free (although there are still issues with language), internet access is expanding, becoming cheaper and sometimes free, but PC’s?

PC shipments trending down ( http://www.statista.com/statistics/264467/global-pc-shipments-since-1st-quarter-2009/ ), emerging markets vs mature markets forecats vs actual ( http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jun/13/pc-market-doldrums-will-continue-to-2018-says-idc ) and emerging vs mature market forecasts ( http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS25483715 )

Flat and/or falling with similar trends predicted into the future, even though we have an expanding number of people with access to the internet.

So it seems like we have two options — (1) make it much easier to create on the average smartphone and/or (2) make PC’s cool again?