AC/UNU Millennium Project
Updating the Global Challenges Facing Humanity
6. Information Technology
How can the global convergence of information and communications technologies work for everyone?

This is the short description of the challenge as appears in the print version of the 2006 State of the Future report. The more complete version of this challenge along with actions to address it, graphs, and indicators to measure change is available on the CD-ROM included with the report.
Please add your suggestions in the space provided after each paragraph and feel free to contact us with any questions.

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General Description

Over a billion people (16% of the world) are connected to the Internet. The digital gap continues to close, and VoIP is expected to account for 75% of world voice services by 2007. Many worry about drowning in endless streams of e-mails, while gigantic growth continues in multimedia storage and communications facilities will connect anyone to everything via a single affordable device. Nanotechnology will make handheld multi-terabyte devices possible.

The blogosphere is doubling in size every six months, with 37% of blogs in Japanese, 31% in English, and 15% in Chinese, forming a new medium for personal creativity and self-organized political and social action. A number of social networks, virtual reality “second worlds,” and on-line games each have millions of participants. Search engines now retrieve multimedia material and satellite imagery. The Semantic Web will allow applications to “understand” each other’s data. Whole libraries are being placed on the Internet, as are free MIT courses. But such a global commons could end as telecommunications broadband carriers and Net providers battle over “net neutrality” legislation to prevent the former from imposing additional charges or restrictions on transmissions, threatening the users with new complexities and unintended consequences.

The Internet is the most powerful force for globalization, democratization, economic growth, and education, facilitating international management of everything from avian flu prevention to World Cup planning. This new means of production in the knowledge economy is cutting through old hierarchical controls in politics, economics, and finance. Ubiquitous computing will help connect people, ideas, resources, and markets. It will democratize the coming knowledge economy with tele-nearly-everything, providing self-organizing mechanisms for emerging collective computer/human intelligence and management systems. This “planetary nervous system” will make cyberspace and 3D space seem to become a continuum of reality. Yet no country has made increasing collective intelligence a national education or ICT goal.

Over 45% of people in the world have telephones, and 27% have mobile phones. E-commerce is helping to close the rich-poor gap. On-line business in China increased 58% in 2005 to $69 billion and there are over 2,000 e-commerce Web sites in rural areas. Combining forecasts from Forrester and Gartner, global e-commerce is growing about 175% annually, to about $8 trillion in 2005. At the same time, civilization has become vulnerable to cyber-terrorism, financial market vulnerability, fraud, loss of cultural diversity, terrorist communications, power outages, viruses, spyware, information warfare, and information pollution. Counter measures create unprecedented challenges for democracy. Mi2g Ltd. estimates that global economic damage from all types of digital risk reached $470–580 billion during 2005. However, spam fell from 77% to 68% of the 60 billion e-mails per day during 2005 due to increasing legal penalties, better filters, and more user “delete before reading.”

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Approaches to address this challenge

Challenge 6 will be addressed seriously when Internet access and basic tele-education is free and available universally and when basic telemedicine is commonplace, making best medical practices available everywhere. MIT’s “one laptop per child” plans to sell some computers by mid-2007 for under $150. Roll-up thin films could replace print and video media screens to reduce size and resources per unit. Massive investments in educational software and multilanguage voice recognition and synthesis will be necessary for the poor majority. Procedures for equitable compensation for entertainment on the Web are needed. We should encourage global “collaboratories,” invent incentives to provide training for all, develop solar robot antennas that hover at high altitudes above the weather instead of a proliferation of microwave towers on land, use existing software to block offensive materials and spam, use tele-volunteers to help poorer regions, and redesign the PC to prevent damage from attacks.

Please suggest other actions to address this challenge or edits to the ones above:

Regional Considerations

Africa: Internet users in Africa have more than quadrupled since 2000, but penetration is only 2.6%, and half of the 23.6 million users are in Egypt, Morocco, and South Africa. Mobile telephone customers jumped 59% from 1999 to 2004, and now constitute 73% of phone subscribers in the continent. As Internet and mobile phones merge and WiFi and WiMax become more available, African Internet usage should accelerate. Tele-education, tele-medicine, and e-government will become more important as African professionals die of AIDS in increasing numbers.

Please suggest edits concerning Africa:

Asia and Oceania: Asia has 36% of the world’s Internet users but only 9.9% penetration; hence ICT growth there has just begun. China is the world’s largest user of cell phones and instant messaging. Chinese is the second most common language on the Internet. China may pass the United States in the number of users within three years. There is international controversy over the Chinese government’s strong controls to prevent reception of “harmful” information. India may receive $30 billion for software and services exports and grow to 100 million Internet users during 2007. Japan has the highest multimedia message service adoption rate in the world, and Japanese is the most commonly used language in the blogosphere. Ubiquitous computing is a national goal for South Korea, which leads the world in broadband penetration.

Please suggest edits concerning Asia and Oceania:

Europe: Europe has 292 million Internet users, with 36% penetration. The Scandinavian region had the highest 2005 “e-readiness ranking” by The Economist. The Internet is fragmenting shared local beliefs but unifying beliefs globally. IDC forecasts that Linux usage will grow rapidly. Estonia has as an objective becoming the “Silicon Valley” of Europe. Russian Internet usage has increased 19%, to 25 million, with 180,000 domestic Web sites.

Please suggest edits concerning Europe:

Latin America: The region has 75 million Internet users, 15% penetration. Over two-thirds of the region’s users are in Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico. Joint partnerships made possible by the Internet are crucial for the region’s development. Only a minority of people consider the Internet for cultural and educational purposes; most see it in terms of business and entertainment.

Please suggest edits concerning Latin America:

North America: The U.S. Department of Defense is developing a Global Information Grid to be ready by 2008 as a real-time virtual world in which all DoD assets can be mapped via remote and micro sensing and satellites. Similar approaches could be used for environmental monitoring, educational development, energy management, and so on to improve global collective intelligence. The region has 226 million Internet users and 68% penetration. Internet2 connects 270 organizations at 10 gigabits per second and plans to increase to 100; its K20 Initiative services 46,000 educational institutions. Forrester predicts U.S. retail sales will be $329 billion in 2010, 13% of the world total.

Please suggest edits concerning North America:

Graph: Regional Internet Population Growth

Source: internetworldstats.com compiled by the Millennium Project

If you want to suggest a better graphic representation for this challenge, please indicate the source(s) of data:

Additional Comments
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Thank you for your participation. The results will be sent to you in the 2007 State of the Future in August 2007.



Survey conducted by the Millennium Project of the ACUNU