[Foundation-l] getting Wikipedia to the 5.2 billion people who can't access it

[Anthony]

On Sun, May 31, 2009 at 8:38 AM, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at gmail.com>wrote:

> 2009/5/31 Anthony <wikimail at inbox.org>:
> > On Sat, May 30, 2009 at 9:33 PM, Brian <Brian.Mingus at colorado.edu>
> wrote:
> >
> >> How does Google Wave help the WMF achieve its goals?
> >
> >
> > Not sure, it doesn't really exist yet.  I'm sure there will be numerous
> ways
> > in which it can do it, though.
>
> While we could move this mailing list over to Waves and get access to
> fancy games of su-doku while we flame each other, I can't see any
> great ways it can help, at least directly. I'm open to being
> surprised, though.
>

If Waves works anything like email, then it will be possible to use it when
not directly connected to the Internet.  How's that for helping get
Wikipedia to people without Internet access?

> Wikipedia has already become a dominant information source for the 1.5
> >> billion people with Internet access thanks to Google.
> >>
> >
> > How does being a dominant information source for people help the WMF
> achieve
> > its goals?
>
> I don't think being dominant helps in any way, but being an
> information source for people basically *is* the WMF's goal.
>

The goal is for the information to get to the people.  Being the source is
only the means to that goal.


> > Personally, I didn't even know the number was 5.2 billion.  Should I do
> this
> > further research myself, or can someone answer these questions for me?
>
> Wikipedia [1] tells me there are 1.58 billion internet users world
> wide. It also tells me [2] there are 6.78 billion people in the world.
> That leaves 5.20 billion non-internet users.


Ah.  :(  That's not very helpful...  What does it mean to be an "internet
user"?

While we can't directly help with things like getting
> people access to clean water, education is a very important part of
> any long term scheme to get people out of poverty, and we can
> certainly help there.


I'd say education is lower on the list than most people think, unless you
mean education as a means to get the hell out of the place you're living in.