The "America-Asia-Europe" Wide Web

The World Wide Web: a mass of information, pictures, videos, and other forms of communication zooming from one end of the world to the other. Undoubtedly, all of this communication is bound to impact cultures and countries in more ways than we can imagine. Many have suggested that the Internet and its growing presence can and will influence a democratization in education and power. With a few clicks of a button or a strum of the keyboard, we have the potential and the capability to influence millions of people worldwide. Or at least, that’s what we’d like to think. While this vision is hopeful, there is nonetheless a sharp disparity in the people who do and do not have access to a computer or the Internet. Therefore, it remains to be seen how far this democratization can go, whom it will ultimately impact, and what it means for those whom it does not reach.  

The so-called “World Wide Web” is a misnomer in that Internet usage is primarily limited to areas of Asia, North America, and Europe. Africa and the Middle East have the lowest rates of Internet usage in the world and make up the smallestpopulations among Internet users.

What will be interesting to note is how a lack of online presence from Internet users in Africa and the Middle East will affect a computer user in somewhere like the U.S. As a digital native myself, I’ve experienced looking at images and watching videos from Internet-heavy areas in genres such as Japanese animations, European dance music, and Brazilian music videos. I cannot say that I have seen the same for areas of the Middle East and Africa.

The Internet is a powerful tool in that it combines the television and radio to distribute information faster than before. Furthermore, with the increasing presence of the Internet, there has been a merging of the virtual and the physical in that what occurs online, has implications offline. So how would someone such as a digital native become influenced from a lack of Internet presence from less digitized countries?

In all likelihood, there are cultural biases that could be formed in that with a lack of exposure comes a lack of understanding. The only information that users read online pertaining to areas of the Middle East and Africa deal primarily with war, violence, and disease. On websites such as YouTube, the number of videos relating to African or Middle Eastern music, for example, is substantially smaller than those from other parts of the world. All of these disparities in online representation add to a further potential misrepresentation of culture. While it will take time for African and Middle Eastern countries to develop to the level of digital technology present in other countries, the absence of online presence is bound to have a detrimental effect to already skewed cultural perceptions.