Blog Overload
November 12th 2007 23:30
Looking at the proliferation of blogs on this site gave me pause to think - are there more blogs on the net than there are internet users? It seems like every man/woman and his or her dog (or cat) has their own blog, with everyone so busy writing their own opinions that they have no time to read anyone else's.
It's a bit like a room full of people where everyone is talking at the same time so that no-one is actually listening to what anyone else is saying (and yes I am aware of my own hypocrisy here!)
According to Internet World Stats there are about 1.25 billion internet users in the world, which represents 19% of the world's population. Although, as the website breathlessly points out, this is a massive increase on the 16 million internet users (or 0.4% of the world population) only 12 years ago, it does give one a sense of perspective.
All this talk of the 'Global Village' rings a little hollow when you consider that 80% of the world's population do not use the internet at all. It's not strictly a geographical phenomenon. The same site lists the top ten languages used on the net. Rather predictably, English is by far the most common language, followed by Chinese. However Arabic, Spanish, Korean and Portuguese are all well-represented, so the internet is not just some North American/Western European phenomenon.
It really is more a phenomenon of the world's 'elite'. You may not think of yourself in such a way, but if you are reading this blog then not only do you have too much time on your hands, you are also part of the world's elite group. Not, perhaps, in the same way as Bill Gates or the Saudi sheiks, but nonetheless in the top 20% of the world. And even poor countries have some very rich people (indeed some of the richest people live in some of the poorest countries, precisely because they become wealthy at the expense of others). Although the reality is, of course, that the vast majority of the world's elite do live in North America and Western Europe.
Indeed Internet World Stats shows that while 70% of North Americans are net users, along with 42% of Europeans (dragged down no doubt by the inclusion of Eastern Europe in these statistics), this rate drops to a mere 12% for Asia and a measly 5% for Africa. If this is a Global Village that we are living in, it is one whose prohibitive cost acts as a barrier to keep out the undesirables, no less effectively than the fence being built in the US to keep out the Mexicans or the wall built by the Israelis to separate them from the Palestinians.
By the way, for anyone interested, this site shows the difficulties in trying to measure the number of blogs, but concludes by suggesting that there aren't nearly as many blogs as many have previously predicted, and that most people who start a blog are likely to give up on it within a very short time, sometimes after only one posting! So don't be surprised if you discover that is the last blog that I ever post!!!!!
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