Message-ID: <3.0.5.32.19990124114544.019c4320@mail.monmouth.com> Date: Sun, 24 Jan 1999 11:45:44 -0500 From: Wilbur Streett <mailto:WStreett@MAIL.MONMOUTH.COM> Subject: Re: Underestimating Wired Africa To: mailto:DEVEL-L@AMERICAN.EDU
At 12:40 PM 1/22/99 BST, Dr Richard Heeks wrote: >UNDERESTIMATING WIRED AFRICA
>
>Estimates of Internet connectivity show Africa to be the least
>wired continent by some distance. Whilst I don't doubt that
>Africa is lagging, I wonder if we aren't underestimating the
>availability of email and Internet access.
Pretty appropriate that the prior messages included a reference to how bad transportation can be in Africa.
If I let someone use my account one time, that doesn't mean that they are "wired" and have access to the Internet or the technology that it entails.
If 40 people are sharing one account, then all 40 people are probably sharing the same keyboard also. That means that among those that can type, maybe 5 people are actually sharing it on a regular basis. (I think that the statistics of people that can touch type in the USA was less than 30% 10 years ago.. probably higher now, but a lot more people have keyboards in front of them..)
Now based on American business practices, I could guarentee that the ISP would promptly figure out that people are sharing the account and terminate it. My ISP agreement is very specific that one account means one logon by one person.
I'm a professional that has put out systems with 10's of thousands of users, and I can certify to you that the development of the systems and their designs didn't try to claim that people that touched the keyboard or had a friend send a message constituted the "user population" in the study. Of course, statistics and definitions are modified for all sorts of political reasons.
Just because someone send you and email from someone else's account doesn't mean that they have access, indeed, with the ease of which an email account can be created, any cases of multiple people using a single account is rather rare. My own ISP allows me to add up to 5 email accounts MYSELF just based on my one subscription.. AOL allows I believe up to 7 alias accounts.
But indeed, the entire basis for using email accounts as a way to determine how many people are using the Internet is false, I have about 6 registrations to ICQ, mostly because they used to require that you register before they displayed the download page for the software, and I've downloaded it quite a few times, including other systems, upgrades, etc.. That's probably how they claim to have 20,000,000 users, because every download is a user ID.
In the case of AOL, there are a large number of handles that I created in the past which I have forgotten the password for, and yet I can't reclaim because they are supposedly "in use".
When I worked in a typical large corporate environment, I also had an account there. I can remember quite a few instances of having to make administrators go through the user lists and remove people that were no longer with the company. That and the 4 or 5 other accounts that I've set up in the various other places, (anonymous gateways, hotmail, etc..) and there are probably 30 email accounts that are associated with me in some database somewhere, but go unused. I'm currently only using this address on a consistent basis, and there are the accounts that my wife has, and my daughter that I didn't even count..
So either using email addresses as the basis for determining "wired" or trying to assert that because someone has sent an email they are "wired" just doesn't strike me as in line with the actual use of the term, which means that the people have constant access to the technology and are fully competant in it's use.
Wilbur
-------------------------------------------- Putting A Human Face On Technology ;-) --------------------------------------------