The World Wide Web: it has changed the way we communicate, learn and progress. All seven continents, including Antarctica, have access to the internet. That being said, only 40 percent of the world population has internet access, leaving over four billion people unconnected to the web, according to internet.org
Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook, has embarked on the ambitious mission to provide internet access to the entire planet. This goal is essential and requires a global effort to bring knowledge and internet equality to third-world countries as soon as possible.
Facebook is a founding partner of internet.org, a global partnership whose goal is the same as Zuckerberg’s: internet for all. This group has created an app that provides free internet access to users in Zambia, Kenya and Tanzania, according to internet.org. The app allows access to predetermined sites offering essential resources like employment opportunities and health information. This app is an incredible way to empower people to take advantage of online resources.
Fifteen percent of the world’s population lives in Africa, the second most populous continent in the world. Yet it has the lowest percentage of people connected to the internet, at only 20 percent of its population, according tolatimes.com. Providing the other 80 percent with online access will have innumerable benefits.
Smartphones and tablets offer education apps, for example, that can provide inexpensive education to children who are unable to get to school. In an effort by One Laptop Per Child to provide education to the 100 million 6- and 7-year-old children who do not have access to education, the organization gave solar-powered tablets, without any instruction, to children in Ethiopia, according to technologyreview.org; within months, these previously illiterate children began singing the alphabet and learning to spell. These tablets and the education apps provided on them changed their lives for the better.
To achieve this goal, innovation and creativity are essential. Technology must advance to meet this goal by making the internet affordable and accessible for the entire world. We must not settle for three billion people online. There are seven billion people on this Earth, and we must keep connecting, country by country, village by village, until each person has access to the incredibly powerful tool that is the World Wide Web.