The new Facebook report, State of Connectivity 2015: A Report on Global Internet Access, both demonstrates how the company is dedicated to making a better world, and frames the problem such that the company’s approach seem like the only one worth considering. Along the way it reveals, inadvertently I think, that connectivity isn’t the primary problem that organizations as well-funded and far-flung as Facebook ought to be solving.
The Facebook report is a formidable document (PDF). Sixty-one pages deep, it clearly aims to justify Facebook’s commercial and associated philanthropic work (with a strong, smart emphasis on capturing and learning from data). Yet it tries hard to be evenhanded. You’d never know from reading this report the intensity of the competitive and political issues Facebook encounters in its attempts to get more people connected. Best of all, it emphasizes parts of the connectivity story that are rarely considered in the West, such as the fact that more than four billion people don’t have any Internet connectivity. That number is decreasing — the report notes that from 2014 to 2015 the number of people using the Internet increased by 300 million — but more than half of the world’s population remains offline. It is, as both the for-profit and philanthropic parts of Facebook and its competitors recognize, the biggest business opportunity on the planet.
However, some of the data offered in this report might point efforts in a different direction. The report notes that more than two-thirds of those not on the Internet don’t understand what the Internet is. And roughly one billion people on Earth remain illiterate.
That last nugget is the most trenchant. At least one-quarter of what big-thinking companies in the connectivity business (Facebook, Google, Microsoft) are framing as a connectivity problem is simply not a connectivity problem. It’s a literacy problem. The Facebook report notes that: “The ability to read and write remains essential to make the most of the internet, which excludes one billion illiterate people.” So why isn’t that what the company, with its tremendous resources and commitment to world-improving, seeks to solve first if it acknowledges the primacy of literacy?
Because Facebook is a technology company, it looks at technology and business problems as the ones worth solving first: giving more people access, making connectivity more affordable. Those are worthy goals and the world is improving because resources are being directed that way. But part of creating positive change is deciding where to focus your efforts. The key question — which the report does not address — is how these connectivity efforts might improve literacy (or whether literacy efforts need to precede connectivity efforts). That might not be the biggest market opportunity, but it might be the one that could have the greatest impact on the planet.
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Hi Jimmy,
Thanks for the post. Definitely agree it’s good to consider all angles when evaluating companies’ directions and decisions.
I have a bit of a different take on the situation I’d like to share. While the literacy rates are the bigger, deeper problem, my take away is that expanding Internet connectivity can/will have an exponentially greater impact on literacy rates versus having the literacy rates be the primary focus. It becomes a platform to [widely] distribute teaching tools – if you’re going to try to teach a billion people to read, you need to be able to reach a billion people.
Setting up ‘the Internet’ on a smartphone or other device can be quickly taught via word of mouth (and should be getting even easier to set up) and then software can help teach en masse.
So, FB is laying the hard groundwork that would enable people, themselves included, to attack the literacy challenge. And, literacy is the greatest market opportunity for a company like Facebook – not the tremendous capital expendatures for getting people online but instead it’s what they’re doing online – most of which requires the ability to read/write.
Time will tell..!
I was just coming over here to write much the same thing as Matt above. Internet connectivity gives entrepreneurs the opportunity to provide innovative teaching tools for literacy and so much more to the masses needing them around the world.
Now, if you wanted to make the argument that reliable access to cheap, environmentally friendly electricity is needed to power mobile learning devices and – arguably more importantly – hospital equipment, refrigerators, water pumps, etc., I could see merit in that argument.
Finally, I find it more authentic when a company’s major philanthropic efforts are somehow related to their core business. Aerospace engineering firms supporting STEM education rings much more true than clean water in developing countries. Clothing companies fighting sweat shops also fits better than protecting endangered species. Facebook is an internet company, so it makes sense that connectivity is their issue of choice.