WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange (Saturday Night Live’s Bill Hader) on Time Magazine’s naming Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg Person of the Year:
“Time Magazine. Always on the cutting edge…discovering Facebook only weeks after your grandmother.”
It’s meant to be funny, obviously, but it also illustrates the point that not everyone is on Facebook. While we’re all adapting to new technologies and trends like Facebook faster than we used to, they simply move too quickly for everybody to keep up.
In fact, a lot of people don’t even have Internet access, let alone a Facebook account. The reasons range from socio-economic to cultural to generational (my mother still can’t work voicemail on her cell phone, although she’s learned how to go “into” the Internet for online shopping).
The U.S. Census Bureau estimates the world’s population is almost 7 billion people. But according to Internet World Stats, only around 1.5 billion people are using the Internet—about one out of every five of us worldwide. In North America, it’s more like four out of five. But in Africa it’s like one out of ten. (By the way, Norway and Iceland have the highest percentage of Internet use by nation, according to Internet World Stats. I would have guessed Japan.)
The reality is, not everyone can pop on the Internet to shop or look something up…or find a job or enroll in healthcare. As things go more and more the Internet’s way, we’re leaving many people behind. But we can use other technologies to help—like IVR.
IVR systems are web-based and can access the Internet just like a PC, and anyone with a phone can use them. While we’re waiting for the rest of the world to get “into” the Internet, we could use phone lines and IVR systems to bridge the gap. We should do it for your grandmother, at the very least.
