Hi, [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: > I guess the report only focuses infrastructure, and then it is not that false > that the World has more cellulars and more computers.
The last figures that I had on this was that the number of general purpose computers in the world (desktops and low-to-mid-range servers) was in the order of 550,000,000 systems. Now this number is probably a year old, and certainly we could have cranked out a few more. Some people might think that we should have more than that, but I think there have been a lot of computers that get real old, and are really not very useful, or burn up, or get flooded, or any number of other things....so I am willing to go as high as 1 billion GP computers in the world. Now I (white, anglosaxen, male, capitalist pig that I am) have about ten of them in my house, and probably about five or six others that might have fit into this description of GP computers if you squinted at them hard enough, so I don't think that 1,000,000,000 is very evenly distributed throughout the world. When I see recent numbers that say that 30% of the households in the US still do not have computers, much less connections to the Internet, I just HAVE to wonder where people get off saying that the Digital Divide is "shrinking fast". If the richest country is this way, then what about some of the others? The last I knew there were towns in Russia that were picking up sticks to burn in fireplaces outside the schools so the kids could be warm. We should hold the next WSIS there...at this time of year. The point that I am trying to make is that we DON'T even have the machinery and infrastructure in place, much less all the other stuff. md -- Jon "maddog" Hall Executive Director Linux International(R) email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] 80 Amherst St. Voice: +1.603.672.4557 Amherst, N.H. 03031-3032 U.S.A. WWW: http://www.li.org Board Member: Uniforum Association, USENIX Association (R)Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds in several countries. (R)Linux International is a registered trademark in the USA used pursuant to a license from Linux Mark Institute, authorized licensor of Linus Torvalds, owner of the Linux trademark on a worldwide basis (R)UNIX is a registered trademark of The Open Group in the USA and other countries. _______________________________________________ DIGITALDIVIDE mailing list DIGITALDIVIDE@mailman.edc.org http://mailman.edc.org/mailman/listinfo/digitaldivide To unsubscribe, send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word UNSUBSCRIBE in the body of the message.
