First published in FEED, 7/15/99.

The United Nations released its annual Human Development Report this week, including a section concerning the distribution of Internet use among the nations of the world. It painted a picture of massively unequal distribution, showing among other things that the United States has a hundred times more Internet users per capita than the Arab States, and that Europe has 70 times more users per capita than sub-Saharan Africa.
Surveying the adoption rates detailed in this report, anyone who has any contact with the Internet can only be left with one thought — “Well, duh.” There is some advantage to quantifying what is common knowledge, but the UN has muddied the issues here rather than clarifying them.

Is there really anybody who could be surprised that the country that invented the internet has more users per capita than Qatar? Is there really anyone who can work themselves up over the lack of MyYahoo accounts in nations that also lack clean water? The truth of the matter is that internet growth is not gradual, it is a phase change — when a country crosses some threshold of readiness, demand amongst its citizens explodes. Beneath that threshold, trying to introduce the internet by force is like pushing string — its is absurd to put internet access on the same plane as access to condoms and antibiotics.

Once a country reaches that threshold, though, there is one critical resource that drives internet adoption, and the UN desperately wants that resource to be money. Among the UN’s proposals is a “bit tax” (one penny per 100 emails) to build out telecommunications infrastructure in the developing world. While improving infrastructure is an admirable goal, it fudges the real issue: among countries who are ready for rapid internet adoption, the most important resource isn’t per capita income but per
capita freedom. Massive internet adoption of the sort the UN envisions will require an equally massive increase in political freedom, and the UN is in no position to say that part out loud.

The HDR report is hamstrung by the UN’s twin goals of advancing human rights and respecting national sovereignty. Where the internet is concerned, these goals are incompatible. The United Arab Emirates has a much better telecom infrastructure than Argentina, but a lower per capita use of the internet. Saudi Arabia has a higher per capita income than Spain but lower internet penetration. What Argentina has more of
than the UAE is neither infrastructure, nor money, but the right of the citizens to get information from a wide variety of sources, and their willingness to exercise that right. Among nations of relatively equal development, it will be the freer nations and not the richer ones that adopt the internet fastest.

The report addresses this issue by suggesting a toothless campaign to “…persuade national governments not to restrict access to the internet because of its tremendous potential for human development,” avoiding mentioning that the “potential for human development” is a death sentence for many of the world’s leaders. If the UN was serious
about driving internet adoption, the section on the internet would have started with the following declaration: “Attention all dictators: internet access is the last stop for your regime. You can try to pull into the station gradually, as China and Kuwait are trying to do, or you can wait to see what happens when you plow into the wall at full speed, like North Korea and Kenya, but the one thing you can’t do is keep going full steam ahead. Enjoy your ride.”