The Internet has got a lot of growing up to do

[Guard Dog]

They call him... El Dise

[Serrano]

They call him... El Dise

Edited May 10, 2012 by Serrano

[Malcador]

I'd like to see Rodriguez make that movie.

[Meshugger]

Yes I did! And I did it while single handedly fighting the Nombre Malo de los Zetas. Viva la paz y la libertad en del Norte!

 

I was like the three amigos all rolled into one! OOORAH!

 

But in reality I just helped design the wireless backhaul and tried to stay out of trouble.

 

I had some vague memories about someone here dealing with Wi-fi infrastructure design. I simply forgot that it was you. Great work!

Edited May 10, 2012 by Meshugger

[Guard Dog]

They call him... El Dise

[Guard Dog]

I just saw the public wifi at Universidad del Noroeste in Hermasillo is now up, Kick @$$. That was the first one we completed back in January.

[Hurlshort]

Awesome GD. My wife has an uncle that teaches at one of the universities in Mexico, but I think it is near Rosarito.

[Orogun01]

They call him... El Dise

[Monte Carlo]

I was just flicking through country stats and when I read the list of the countries in the world ranked by number of Internet users I did a bit of a double-take: there is a LOT of untapped potential left. LOTS of new citizens will be added to the Internet every year for decades to come. Including from nearly-developed countries like Poland, Italy, Brazil, and Russia.

 

Krezzie, you need to get on a plane out of the land of spiders and skin cancer. Italy is a first world country. Warsaw is more first world than Adelaide.

 

I take your point about Russia, though, it's got a 100 AD political system, or is that unfair on The Romans?

[Humodour]

I categorise Italy as "nearly developed" because it has a lot of political, economic, and social problems that are far more reminiscent of developing countries than a developed country. Sure, it's a part of Western society, and a part of Europe, and has a high GDP, but does that automatically make it developed (remember this discussion is over whether "nearly developed" is an inappropriate title, so it's not as if I'm implying Italy is down there with Egypt or China)? The power that forces like the Mafia exert over Italian life are definitely NOT characteristic of a developed country.

 

Also, only about 50% of Italians have Internet access (2010). So it's definitely not a developed country in that sense. But maybe the Italians are just too busy out enjoying fine wine and pasta to worry about arguing semantics about development on the net.

 

Still, I think there's a bit of a misleading notion floating around global thought that if a country is in Europe, then it is developed.

 

Edit: perhaps as a more elucidating case study, how many of us would consider Greece a developed country among the likes of New Zealand, Britain, the Netherlands, Canada, France, Germany, or the Scandinavian states? Certainly, Italy's problems don't appear to be as bad as Greece's. Yet. But it's food for thought regarding what classifies as 'developed' and what doesn't. And can a country that was once considered developed (relative to its peers at a certain point in time, as the term has no meaning otherwise) fall out of the 'developed' category as its peers advance and it does not, or indeed if its peers stay static and it falls behind?

Edited June 5, 2012 by Krezack

[Nepenthe]

It's funny... I've lived in Greece a couple of stretches in my life, the last one being from around 2000 to 2004 (well, one of my parents was living there, so I visited often and stayed for longer than "tourist" periods, also learning the language). When I first flew in there after quite a few years, in 2000, I took off from the country in the world with the most mobile phones per capita. I had a layover in Austria, where I was treated as almost royalty, being a skinny 19 year old with a new Nokia cell phone. Then I landed in Athens, where every hairy-armed taxi driver etc. had a cell phone.

 

Points being, Greece did some considerable boot-strapping in the 90s and 00s. Unfortunately they spent it exactly on becoming a developed country, instead of taking the slower way and investing into things that would have made the development sustainable. Essentially the whole middle class consisted of people who worked for the government. And the other one is that picking random statistics like internet penetration is going to **** your results, when you start assuming that Greece is more developed than Austria because they have higher cell phone penetration.

[Humodour]

It's funny... I've lived in Greece a couple of stretches in my life, the last one being from around 2000 to 2004 (well, one of my parents was living there, so I visited often and stayed for longer than "tourist" periods, also learning the language). When I first flew in there after quite a few years, in 2000, I took off from the country in the world with the most mobile phones per capita. I had a layover in Austria, where I was treated as almost royalty, being a skinny 19 year old with a new Nokia cell phone. Then I landed in Athens, where every hairy-armed taxi driver etc. had a cell phone.

 

Points being, Greece did some considerable boot-strapping in the 90s and 00s. Unfortunately they spent it exactly on becoming a developed country, instead of taking the slower way and investing into things that would have made the development sustainable. Essentially the whole middle class consisted of people who worked for the government. And the other one is that picking random statistics like internet penetration is going to **** your results, when you start assuming that Greece is more developed than Austria because they have higher cell phone penetration.

 

I think it's fair to say that I didn't imply a country's level of development is tied to a single statistic (whether technological or otherwise). But the thread is about future Internet growth in various country, hence why the statistic of Italy's internet adoption popped up. As I said, the Italians could all be out simply enjoying life in other ways, instead of being on the Internet, thus Internet adoption levels are not indicative of a country's developmental status in theory (there actually is a medium-strength correlation between Internet adoption and developmental status, but this correlation only serves as a general guide and can't in any way be used to determine which countries are developed or not).

 

Italy's actual issues are what led me to list it among other nearly-developed countries in the first post. A society where corruption is rife (slightly less corrupt than Brazil and China) and political, social, and economic life are all heavily influenced by organised crime cannot be considered fully developed. Not to mention Italy's many other problems (which, to be fair probably stem at least partially from the corruption and Mafia).

 

Still, whether we agree or not on Italy being developed, what is noteworthy is that Italy has maybe another 25 million people to add to the Internet yet. It will be the single biggest source of addition of future Internet citizens in the EU, as all other large EU countries have much higher Internet penetration rates. Also of note in this regard in Europe are Russia, Turkey, and Ukraine, but none of these are in the EU.

[Nepenthe]

But the thread is about future Internet growth in various country, hence why the statistic of Italy's internet adoption popped up.

I think it's fair to say that it was about that, but had mostly stopped being about it when I entered the discussion.

[Monte Carlo]

Italy's problems are manifold: yes corruption, massive regional imbalances, a corporatist system, weak coalition governments and now an EU satrapcy in Mario Monti.

 

Northern and Southern Italy are almost like separate countries.

 

But corruption and organised crime are not as pronounced as Russia, where organised crime is a government department.