CES 2008: The Global Digital Divide... Narrows?

President Paul Kagame is here from Rwanda - I think the only head of state in attendance. He spoke in an interview session after the Negroponte Keynote, and then again at one of the panel discussions about International Development.

This is for me the most exciting and provocative topic here at the CES Conference. Kagame said that 93% of Africa's 800,000,000 people are basically not served by advanced technology, and thus this represents a huge opportunity in terms of the market as well as having humanitarian implications. Kagame also discussed a medical tracking software they now use that he feels has dramatically improved health care in Rwanda. I'm not sure but I think it's part of the Rwandan program called "TracNet".

Paul Meyer, an noted innovator in technology and international development, noted that mobile phones are the PCs for the developing world, and also that even the poorest countries may have an opportunity to "leapfrog" past issues that have slowed or thwarted first world technological progress.

Despite the contrast between the excesses of Las Vegas and the spartan conditions of most of the developing world it has been inspiring to see innovators working to bring the benefits of technology to far more people around the world. Technology's finest hour will be when it brings better lives to everybody, and brings everybody closer together.

China's Online Population Explosion

Hot off the research block, the Pew/Internet Research Group has published a report yesterday which indicates that China's internet population of 137 million is growing at a faster rate and is expected to outpace that of the U.S.'s of 165 to 210 million in a few years. This is not suprising considering the population of China which is at 1.3B compared to the U.S.'s at 300M.

There are many implications of this notwithstanding the impact on site globalization requirements for more and more companies wanting to do business in the lucrative Chinese market. The upside is that the "Chinese share a single written language, despite the multiplicity of spoken tongues..." (Source: Pew http://www.pewinternet.org/PPF/r/218/report_display.asp). What is potentially trickier is understanding the social, political, and cultural nuances in the usage of language translation, color, metaphors, and imagery. I also recently read somewhere that China is expected to surpass India in the outsourcing arena as well.

Read the report (pdf).