Chapter 7: global issues

GLOBAL ISSUES Global Internet Usage A recent report by internetworldstats. com regarding internet penetration showed different internet penetration rate in different regions.
In the North American region, the country with the highest penetration rate is Greenland with a penetration rate of 90. 2% followed secondly by Canada with a penetration rate of 81. 6%. The third country with the highest penetration rate is the united state with a rate of 78. 3%.
The penetration rate in the Oceania/ Australia region is also high with countries like Australia leading in the region with a penetration rate of 89. 8%. This is closely followed by New Zealand with a penetration rate of 84. 5%. This is followed at a slight distant with Guam. At the bottom of the list is Samoa with a penetration rate of 6. 6% followed by Papau New Guinea with a penetration rate of 2. 0%.
Europe is the third region with the highest penetration rate of 61. 3%. In this region, top five countries with the highest penetration rate include Norway with the highest penetration rate of 97. 2% followed by Denmark with a penetration rate of 97. 2%. In the third position is Finland with a penetration rate of 88. 6%. The United Kingdom follows with a penetration rate of 84. 1%. The fifth country with the highest penetration rate is German with a penetration rate of 82. 7%. However, countries with the least penetration rate include: Italy with a penetrating rate of 58. 7%, followed by Greece with a penetration rate of 46. 9. This is followed by Russia with a penetration rate of 44. 3%. Ukraine followed with a penetration rate of 33. 9%. At the bottom of the list is Kosovo with a penetration rate of 20. 7%.
The Latin America region is the 4th region with the highest penetration rate with Agentina being the highest country in this region with a penetration rate of 67. 0%. This is followed by Chile with a penetration rate of 59. 2%. This is closely followed by Columbia with a penetration rate of 55. 0%. In the 4th position is Venezuela with a penetration rate of 39. 7%. At the bottom of the list is Peru with a penetration rate of 34. 1%. At a distant it is followed by El Salvador with a penetration rate of 20. 7%. Guatemala follows with a penetration rate of 16. 5%. At the bottom of the list are Cuba and Nicaragua with penetration rates of 15. 4% and 11. 7% respectively.
The region with the 5th highest penetration rate is the Middle East with a rate of 35. 6%. Here, Israel leads with a penetration rate of 70% followed closely with United Arab Emirates with a rate of 69%. Palestinian W. B and Iran follow with a penetration rate of 58. 9% and 46. 9% respectively. The fifth country with the highest penetration rate is Saudi Arabia with a rate of 43. 6%. At the bottom is Jordan at the rate of 30. 5%, followed by Syria with a rate of 19. 8%. Yemen follows with a rate of 10. 8% at the bottom is Iraq with a rate of 4. 3%.
The region with the 6th highest penetration rate is Asia at 26. 2%. The countries with the highest penetration rate in this region are South Korea and Japan with rates of 82. 7% and 80% respectively. These countries have a higher penetration rate than even that of the United States. These countries are followed by Hong Kong, Malaysia and China with penetration rates of 68. 7%, 61. 7% and 38. 4% respectively. However some countries in this region have low penetration rate. These ere like India with a penetration rate of 10. 2%. Apart from India, some countries have very low penetration rate like Indonesia at 5. 4%, Afghanistan at 4. 2%, Bangladesh at 3. 5% and Cambodia at 3. 1%.
The region with the lowest penetration rate is Africa with a rate of only 13. 5%. In this region, Morocco leads with a rate of 49% followed by Egypt and Nigeria having penetration rates of 29% and 26. 4% respectively. The Congo Democratic Republic has a penetration rate of only 1. 3%, Madagascar has a penetration rate of only 1. 6% and Liberia has a penetration rate of 0. 5%. Ethiopia is a country with more than 90 million people and has a penetration rate of only 0. 7%.

2. The OLPC and other efforts
From the article, there was some educational gain as a result of providing of laptops. This is because results done by Mashable. com showed there was a significant increase in the cognitive skills with no significant gain in the standardized achievement in Math and Languages skills.
Nicholas Negroponte, an MIT professor started the one laptop per child movement in Cambodia. His dream was for every child to own a laptop computer. There was an improvement in the literacy rate as two years before the rates where 48% and 22% for male and female respectively. The area in which Negroponte worked had little electricity and running water. However, the laptops where designed with no holes so that they do not shut down when water pours on them. They had a good wireless range and had open source software. The laptops could be recharged through attaching a crack to the laptop. The operating system of XO is referred as Sugar. This is available in 25 languages and thus enabling opportunity for equal education to all children. The sugar is an operating system that has been developed for the XO computer and is written in the Python programming language. XO computer have had the largest development in Peru and Uruguay. However, it is argued that Peru’s main goal for encouraging this increase is for social inclusion.
It is advisable to use such a system as it can be used in different languages which mean that it can be used in different countries. It can also not be stolen. This is because it shuts down after 24 hours.
Uruguay has taken a different way on their education system. They heavily rely on XO computers. Uruguay has come up with a plan called plan Ceibal that led to the first Math Olympics in the country where 25000 students from the fifth and sixth grade competed on their XO computers using a downloaded program. This can be seen as each child from the 1st to the 9th grade is given an XO computer. This is because many believe that every child has a right to education, they also have a right to have access to the internet. 68% of the population in this country owns a computer. Surprisingly, 71% of the poor population owns a computer.
3. Social inclusion and technology within the United States
Even though in the US the tablets computers are being purchased, these computers are just being introduced in the OLPC movement. The Co-founder of he Marvel Technology group being one of the leaders in this effort. Marvel makes processing chips that are used in phones which run on TD-SCDMA network.
There have been efforts to develop low cost laptops so as to be affordable to the students. This effort can be seen by companies like Intel.
4. The Internet – Bringing Global Awareness
With the increased popularity of the internet, education and communication has become dependent on the internet. There are all kinds of information in the internet both true and false. Information is also vast in the internet to the extent that some government wishes to control their citizens’ accessibility. In some countries, access to some sites is slow or is prohibited as the sites are regarded unfit with the country’s culture.
In some Asian countries, there have been instances where some sites like facebook. com, google. com and youtube. com have been blocked from being viewed by the citizens. In a country like Pakistan, facebook. com was blocked for a comment that was regarded as being an attack to the Islamic religion. The statement was that everybody should draw Mohamed day which is considered as blasphemy (hopper 26).
Various sites like Twiter. com, Facebook. com and youtube. com had been blocked in China. It is suspected that this was as a result of the Tianamen Square protest so as to stop the coverage of the protest that brought a lot of global attention. However, some welcomed the action as it helped in the growth of some of the Chinese sites.
Some sites which are not popular in the US get blocked. A site like France24 that brought women’s rights in Sudan to light was blocked in Iraq and other sites are normally censored.
The internet and the social networking site are important when giving attention on decisions that can be globally criticized. These decisions include; decisions that affect women’s rights and the right to express (hopper 39).
However, to others, the internet plays a major role in sharing information.
5. True/False exercise
1. The United States has the highest internet penetration rate of all countries in North America. False
2. Norway has a much lower internet penetration rate than the United States.
False
3. Iraq has one of the highest internet penetration rates in the Nicholas Negroponte world.
False
4. India has one of the highest internet penetration rates in the world.
False
5. Most countries in Africa have an internet penetration rate greater than 30%.
False
6. Nicholas Negroponte has played a major role in the OLPC project.
True
7. Cambodia was the first testing ground for the XO computer.
True
8. Honey was the name of the operating system for the XO computer.
False
9. The Sugar operating system is available in 25 languages.
True
10. The Sugar operating system was written in an open source programming language called Python.
True
11. Ubunto is the name of an open source operating system.
False
12. Uruguay has provided a laptop computer to every child from 1st through 9th grade.
True
13. Weili Dai is a Co-Founder of Intel.
False
14. Believers of Sharia law are leading the way to have open internet access for all sites in the Mid-East.
True
15. The Chines government posted several videos on youtube. com showing the Tianamen Square protests.
False
16. Oerwez Kambaksh was originally provided with a one million dollar hunanitarian award for posting material related to supporting womens rights in Pakistan.
False
17. Lubna Hussein was arrested for indecent exposure because she wore pants in public.
True
18. More than 40, 000 women have been arrested in Sudan for wearing what was deemed as inappropriate clothing.
True
19. The internet has never really had an impact in social causes.
True
20. Facebook has never been banned in an Asian country.
False
Work Cited
Hopper, Paul. Understanding Cultural Globalization. Cambridge, UK: Polity, 2007. Print.
Internet World Starts. 2001. Miniwatts Marketing Group. 25 Nov 2012.
http://internetworldstats. com/