Note: This is the beginnings of a script/eventual blogpost on the sensationalist headlines about the Marubo People of Brazil getting Starlink. It’s still very much in progress and a bit “fact dump-y” for my liking lol. Would love input as ever so feel free to contact me if you have opinions, directions, input or wonderings!
i have a London accent, and as well as the usual “bottoh o wo’er” problem, i speak fast enough to trip up native British speakers. please use the subtitles i invested in, and maybe turn down the speed if you can’t follow my speech. i promise it’s me and not you! anyway, here’s the video.
So let’s think: where would you put yourself on a scale from ‘extremely online’ to ‘never even heard of the internet’? I put myself somewhere on the extremely online side. I’m a web developer by trade, I spend an amount of time that would be embarrassing to most people on the internet on several devices at once, and even more cringeworthy is my love for the internet itself. But this isn’t about my internet browsing habits, it’s about you!
Since you’re watching this video, I’m guessing you’re at the very least in the middle; you know your way around a computer and are only sometimes afraid to use it.
Even if you don’t know your RSS from your CSS, you’re capable of navigating the web with a browser or using an app to access this video. You have enough mobile data, or a stable wifi or ethernet connection, and a device capable of using an app or a browser to get onto YouTube. On the other extreme, there are all the people who have never used the internet, or haven’t in months or years.
Nearly three billion people aren’t on the internet; they’ve possibly never sent an email, searched for a fact or place on a search engine or watched a pointless video online. They may not have a connection available in their home, a mobile plan, wifi or ethernet, or even anywhere in their local area where they can get online. Given the current shape and direction of what we, for better or worse, call the “modern” world, this means a third of the world’s population doesn’t have the possibility of access to a wealth of opportunity, fun and exploration, and more importantly, can’t fully participate in the world as it is now.
The UN has an - in their words - aspirational goal for everyone to have “universal and meaningful” internet access by 2030, though the number of people offline only dropped from 2.7 billion to 2.6 billion according to their reports between 2022 and 2023, the release of the last ITU report.
I just mentioned the ITU; I’ll be using their stats throughout this piece. the ITU, or International Telecommunication Union, is the UN’s “specialised agency for information and communication technologies (ICTs). The organisation is made up of a membership of 193 Member States and more than 1000 companies, universities and international and regional organizations. … ITU is the oldest agency in the UN family – connecting the world since the dawn of the telegraph in 1865.“
Yes, that was an aside I shared mostly cos I was shook it’s been active since the days of the telegram, but yeah, anyway!
When the ITU say universal and meaningful they really mean it; these are ambitious subgoals, especially in 6 years! “Target 1.7: Universal access to the Internet by all individuals"" and “2.4 - All digital gaps – particularly gender, age, and urban/rural – to be bridged” really stick out to me.
So now, as we’ve said, nearly three billion people aren’t on the internet. As of 2023, that’s 2.6 billion people, or 1 in 3 humans on Earth. The first time I heard stats about the people not online I was shocked, but the amount of unconnected people also stood at 40%, or 2 in 5 at the beginning of 2020.
As you can see, the spread of Internet has been improving steadily. Since 2018, 1.7 billion people have come online.
In 2023, 93% of people in high-income countries used the Internet. In low-income countries, it was 27 per cent. Between 2020 and 2023, In low-income countries the number of Internet users grew by 44% (from low initial numbers of course). The urban vs rural gap is wild too; worldwide if you live in an urban area, 81% of people are online. If you live rurally, it’s only half. in low-income countries, less than one in five people (17 per cent) living in rural areas use the Internet.
20% of women in low income countries use the internet, compared to 35% of men in the same places. Globally it’s 70% of men and 65% of women.
81% of Brazilians are online, putting them behind the ITU’s average for the Americas of 87%. [more stuff about brazil and the internet, probably from ITU again. bridge these gtwo sections]
The- wait a second, let me get the pronunciation… the [clip of pronunciation] yeah, the Marubo are an indigenous people of Brazil. Brazil is the biggest country in South America, and the 5th largest country in the world with a population of over 200 million living there as of the 2022 census.
The Marubo share their history and customs orally and speak their own language, also called Marubo. They live on the Ituí River in the Amazon rainforest. It takes days of hiking to reach their villages on foot. They all have the last surname, Marubo, when dealing with the outside world.
Recently they were set up with Starlink, a system and a business Elon Musk owns that provides satellite internet access worldwide, reaching some of the most disconnected places on Earth as well as places that are very well connected indeed, like London.
The article that broke that story, in the New York Times, makes it pretty clear that Starlink didn’t provide the access out of the goodness of its corporate heart; it was Allyson Reneau, a philanthropist and numerous other things, who provided them with the hookup. After numerous attempts by Enoque Marubo to reach out directly to Starlink via video, she provided the money to purchase and install the equipment.
Helpfully, it also sheds light on the some of the nuances of a brand new fast and stable connection to the internet. The obvious benefits; quicker emergency response times to snake bites have saved lives, for example, as well as video calls with faraway relatives and friends. The article also exposes some of the drawbacks; minors getting access to pornography; the siren call of the internet in general meaning people forget their responsibilities — relatable to be honest — and understandably, arguments over the place of the internet within their lives.
The NYT’s article, however, doesn’t point out a bunch of other things. Reporting by an independent news site 404 media, shows that the Marubo people have had access to the internet for some time, just not high speed access, any time they fancied it. The problems and benefits I listed weren’t alien concepts to them before the Starlink connection. They’ve used Orkut, a social media site that was online from the early 2000s to 2014, and have been on Facebook since. Enoque Marubo, who I mentioned earlier, has been on Instagram since 2013, and follows many other Marubo people. The Marubo people have been online for literal decades!
The news sites drawing on this article have chosen, erm, let’s say different angles on the reporting.
As we can see in the news stories and sensationalist headlines, there’s a real temptation to see indigenous people as a monolith and ignore the real barriers to their self-directed and firmly self-chosen flourishing. As Enroque puts it: “We are an Amazonian tribe that for more than 100 years has been in contact with non-Indigenous society. Full isolation has not existed for a long time … there are still people who defend the idea that indigenous people should remain isolated and alienated from technology. This view is primitive and ignores the fundamental right of Indigenous peoples to decide their own futures and to have access to the same opportunities as anyone else.”
A question you might be asking; why weren’t the Marubo as online as their fellow Brazilians? (are people asking this lol?)
why not use satellites? starlink, cost, lack of reliability and cost. why not just build the undersea cables needed? cost to governments, business interests not lining up with what is needed, what’s big businesses’ incentive.
”For the most part, consortiums of tech and telecoms companies build the cables, and often resell bandwidth on the fibre lines to customers around the world. An email sent from London to New York across one of these cables can travel in under 70 milliseconds (0.07 seconds). Satellites, by contrast, are able to carry far less data and are much more expensive to launch and run. They account for a tiny fraction of intercontinental data transport and will do so for decades to come.
For years, the subsea cable sector was driven by investments from largely state-owned telecoms operators, but over the past decade tech groups have taken their place. US tech behemoths, including Google, Meta and Microsoft, invested about 2bn in cables between 2016 and 2022, accounting for 15 per cent of the worldwide total. Over the next three years, they will pump in a further 3.9bn, or 35 per cent of the total.”
[here be dragons; undecided on everything below]
call to action/conclusion????
age: older people are much more likely to be digitally excluded.
Actually, another quick aside. I and many other people dislike the term “developing countries”; it creates a sense of hierarchy or superiority and often it’s not a meaningful grouping, much like other terms such as “the Global South” when New Zealand is the southernmost country by many measures but is considered part of the Global North… But that’s the terminology the UN uses so i’m going with it when quoting them.
infrastructure development costs. for example, do you ever think about submarine internet cables? (number of internet cables to and from certain countries comparison) land locked developing countries (like?) need to negotiate with bordering states. internet history lesson, quick quick.
disability: disabled people are way more likely to be digitally excluded due to living at the intersections of many of these issues. Disabled people are more likely to live in poverty, more older people are disabled, homeless?, and often struggle to get support with adapting tasks and equipment to fit specific needs.