The Case for Connectivity and Borderless Digital Commerce
This is a digital world. And in this world, we are on the verge of lifting up entire economies, improving education, and changing the life outcomes of billions of people.
We just have to improve connectivity.
As Manuel Castells, distinguished author and oft-cited Professor for Communication Technology and Society at University of Southern California has stated, “The Internet is the decisive technology of the Information Age, as the electrical engine was the vector of technological transformation of the Industrial Age… this global network of computer networks, largely based nowadays on platforms of wireless communication, provides ubiquitous capacity of multimodal, interactive communication in chosen time, transcending space.“[1]. Castells further adds,
“The Internet ensures the production, distribution, and use of digitized information in all formats”
calling out a 2011 study published by Martin Hilbert in Science noting that 95 percent of all information existing in the planet is digitized and most of it is accessible on the Internet and other computer networks.[2]
Furthermore, as the McKinsey Global Institute has pointed out, there is a strong correlation between access to the Internet and one’s contribution to wealth creation, making possible “…new waves of business models and entrepreneurship” as well as “radical innovations for accessing, using, and delivering goods and services for everyone.” [3]
Given the impact of this global network, it should have surprised no one when in June of 2016, the United Nations issued a declaration on the importance of connectivity and that the access to the Internet and online freedom is a human right. The UN Resolution called on nations to apply “a comprehensive human rights-based approach when providing and expanding access to the internet and for the internet to be open, accessible and nurtured.”[4]
Unfortunately, there are nearly 4 billion people who lack Internet connectivity. These are 4 billion people who cannot benefit from the societal and economic benefits brought about by connectivity.[5]It is not that this less-connected half of the population doesn’t have the potential for access. In Facebook’s 2017 State of Connectivity Report, they found that 94% of the population in its surveyed nations live within range of a mobile signal.
[1] Manuel Castells, The Impact of the Internet on Society: A Global Perspective, 2014, (Source: http://bit.ly/2u14c9w)
[2] Martin Hilbert and Priscila Lopez, The World’s Technological Capacity to Store, Communicate, and Compute Information,Science, 2011 (Source: http://bit.ly/2u1dYs9)
[3] McKinsey Global Institute, Internet matters: The Net’s sweeping impact on growth, jobs, and prosperity, 2011, (Source: http://bit.ly/2tXIgfC)
[4] U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, HRC, Resolution A/HRC/32/L.20, 2016, (Source: http://bit.ly/2sUVsSQ)
[5] World Internet Usage and Population Statistics, published by Nielsen Online and the International Telecommunications Union, March 2017, as published on www.InternetWorldStats.com (Source: http://bit.ly/JNZ65e)
