| ▲ | alephnerd 3 days ago | |
> I can remember watching videos as early as 2014 showing nomadic tribesmen in Africa using flip phones for mobile payments Yet internet penetration in Kenya was only 43% [0]. Additionally, countries with significantly higher HDIs (ie. Significantly higher developmental indicators) like Thailand had lower internet penetration in 2014. Internet penetration was extremely useful in building out infra, but it was just one piece of various other pieces of social infrastructure needed to build human capital. > The penetration of telecomm into these countries is going to have massive upside in the next two decades, and computer literacy plays a part in that Most households in developing countries don't have computers [1], so assuming internet penetration implies computer literacy is a fallacy, as most households globally instead use a cellphone as their primary computing device [2]. This is one of the reasons why OLPC failed. Steve Jobs was correct that the smartphone user experience is the best experience for non-technical users. The organization would have realized this if they tested their hypothesis first, but they didn't. Even Bill Gates called them out for this when they were trying to fundraise in the early 2000s [3] [0] - https://www.internetlivestats.com/internet-users-by-country/... [1] - https://datahub.itu.int/data/?e=AGO&i=12046 [2] - https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/IT.CEL.SETS.P2?most_rec... [3] - https://www.cio.com/article/254451/consumer-technology-bill-... | ||
| ▲ | lurk2 2 days ago | parent [-] | |
> so assuming internet penetration implies computer literacy is a fallacy, as most households globally instead use a cellphone as their primary computing device I was using computer literacy as a stand-in for technical literacy. > Steve Jobs was correct that the smartphone user experience is the best experience for non-technical users. We’re speaking about this in retrospect; mass-market smartphones were still in their infancy when the project launched. > Even Bill Gates called them out for this when they were trying to fundraise in the early 2000s Gates doesn’t mention anything about smartphones in this article. | ||