Page 118 - The Fourth Industrial Revolution

Shift 5: Ubiquitous Computing

The tipping point: 90% of the population with regular access to the internet
By 2025: 79% of respondents expected this tipping point will have occurred
Computing is becoming more accessible every day, and computing power has never been more
available to individuals – be that via a computer with internet connection, a smart phone with 3G/4G or
services in the cloud.

Today, 43% of the world’s population is connected to the internet. 79 And, 1.2 billion smart phones were
sold in 2014 alone. 80 In 2015, sales of tablets are estimated to take over sales of personal computers
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(PCs), while mobile phone sales (all combined) will outpace computers by six to one. As the internet
has been outgrowing every other media channel in speed of adoption, it is expected that, in only a few
years, three-quarters of the world’s population will have regular access to the web.

In the future, regular access to the internet and information will no longer be a benefit of developed
economies, but a basic right just like clean water. Because wireless technologies require less
infrastructure than many other utilities (electricity, roads and water), they will very likely become
accessible much quicker than the others. Hence, anyone from any country will be able to access and
interact with information from the opposite corner of the world. Content creation and dissemination will
become easier than ever before.

Positive impacts
– More economic participation of disadvantaged populations located in remote or underdeveloped
regions (“last mile”)
– Access to education, healthcare and government services
– Presence
– Access to skills, greater employment, shift in types of jobs
– Expanded market size/e-commerce
– More information
– More civic participation
– Democratization/political shifts
– “Last mile”: increased transparency and participation versus an increase in manipulation and echo
chambers

Negative impacts
– Increased manipulation and echo chambers
– Political fragmentation
– Walled gardens (i.e. limited environments, for authenticated users only) do not allow full access in
some regions/countries

The shift in action
To make the internet available to the next 4 billion users, two key challenges must be overcome:
access must be available, and it must be affordable. The race to provide the rest of the world access
to the web is underway. Already, over 85% of the world’s population lives within a couple kilometres

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