Posted on 03/12/2006 7:02:45 AM PST by SkyPilot
DOHA (AFP) - The Arab world is lagging behind in the digital revolution, with Internet users making up less than four percent of its population, according to participants in a telecommunications development conference in Doha.
"The Arab presence on the Internet is almost zilch ... not more than a few websites providing information or personal sites," said Syrian Telecommunications and Technology Minister Amr Salem.
This is due to technical factors, notably "the absence of an Arab portal, which means connections on the network have to go through Europe or the United States, pushing up costs," he said.
Salem said other reasons were "the lack of a juridical framework covering the Arab region and investors' hesitation" to put their money in the telecommunications sector, which is booming in industrialized countries.
According to statistics compiled by the UN's International Telecommunications Union (ITU), a co-organizer of the week-long Doha conference ending on March 15, the 22 Arab League members had only 11.7 million Internet users out of a total population of 316 million in 2004.
This amounts to a 3.7 percent penetration rate in the region, whose combined Gross Domestic Product totals 813 billion dollars and per capita income reaches 2,571 dollars.
In contrast, the use of mobile phones is expanding in Arab states, with 45.9 million subscribers in 2004 -- a penetration rate of 14.51 percent -- compared to 27.1 million landline subscribers, which amounts to an 8.59 percent penetration rate.
The Group of Eight leading industrial nations had a total of 429 million Internet users in 2004, nearly as much as the rest of the world combined -- 444 million.
Internet use is growing at varying rates in the Arab world, the ITU's representative in the region, Ibrahim Haddad, told AFP, pointing to a "very rapid" growth in the oil-rich Gulf monarchies.
"But Arab countries generally suffer problems related to infrastructure, poverty and illiteracy -- particularly digital illiteracy," he said.
Salem said Arab states were conscious of the need to tackle such difficulties.
They "are unanimous in wanting to promote" information technologies, he said, hinting that this is one sector which appears to have escaped chronic inter-Arab political differences.
"No Arab country fears e-commerce or digital services on the Internet," Salem said, while deploring the delay in laying down a pan-Arab juridical framework to regulate information technologies.
Haddad was more optimistic, noting that half the Arab countries had set up independent telecommunications bodies, which helped resolve legal problems and reassure investors.
Moreover, he said, Arab states have already privatized 43 percent of their major telecommunications operators -- with the Internet and mobile phones open to the private sector up to 76 percent and 87 percent, respectively.
At the regional level, Haddad said, the private sector will be largely involved in the execution of a project to establish an inter-Arab Internet connection.
The plan, dubbed Regional Access Point, was initiated by Arab states in conjunction with the ITU at an estimated cost of 200 million dollars.
Haddad said this was one of six Arab projects approved during the World Summit on the Information Society held in Tunis last November, including the creation of a digital database.
Whatever achievements they claim were lifted entirely from Greek, Roman, and other cultures that they looted and plundered
Arabic philosophy is not important as original thought. Men like Avicenna and Averroes are essentially commentators. Speaking generally, the views of the more scientific philosophers come from Aristotle and the Neoplatonists in logic and metaphysics, from Galen in medicine, from Greek and Indian sources in mathematics and astronomy, and among mystics religious philosophy has also an admixture of old Persian beliefs. Writers in Arabic showed some originality in mathematics and in chemistry – in the latter case, as an incidental result of alchemical researches. Mohammedan civilization in its great days was admirable in the arts and in many technical ways, but it showed no capacity for independent speculation in theoretical matters. Its importance, which must not be underrated, is as a transmitter. Between ancient and modern European civilization, the dark ages intervened. The Mohammedans and the Byzantines, while lacking the intellectual energy required for innovation, preserved the apparatus of civilization – education, books, and learned leisure. Both stimulated the West when it emerged from barbarism – the Mohammedans chiefly in the thirteenth century, the Byzantines chiefly in the fifteenth. In each case the stimulus produced new thought better than any produced by the transmitters – in the one case scholasticism, in the other the Renaissance (which however had other causes also).
- Lord Bertrand Russell, A History Of Western Philosophy (1st Edition, 1945)
Funny.
As a decimal system placeholder, they "borrowed" it from India.
And they did not invent astronomy, either. They simply renamed the stars discovered by others, and eventually those copies reached the west.
Conquer -- steal --- move on. The Islamic way.
Geronimo always denied that!
Great, yet another digital divide fee to be tacked on our phone bills. /s
See long ago discussion at What, Exactly, are the Great Achievements of the Islamic World?
ML/NJ
The title of this story is as obvious as saying "South Park" is a cartoon! Duh, these people live in the stone ages.
Writing was invented in that part of the world, and they have 10% illiteracy in the best of conditions. Collectively, they publish or translate around 300 books per year.
The "Golden Age" of Islam coincided with their time of expansion, when there was a steady in-flow of loot and slaves who knew how to run a civilization. When this in-flow stopped, so did the Golden Age
If it wasn't for oil, the Arab world would be an inconsequential hell-hole of no interest to anybody
This may change with increased satellite Internet service. With prices now around $50/mo, it's affordable by the middle class
I would imagine a service offering encrypted, high-speed access to the internet, where people could download uncensored video, music, etc would get a lot of customers in the Arab world. Particularly with antennas that can now be more easily concealed
Zero and the "arabic" number system was invented in India.
The #1 major at every single University in the Arab world is "Islamic Studies."
I am not making that up.
If they wish to study engineering, mathematics, biology, or other areas, they go to Europe, Canada, or the US.
One History Channel program about the invention of zero had a neat scene: A teacher is telling a scribe about the concept. The scribe gets a puzzled look and says "What symbol do we use for it? How do you display "nothing"? The teacher says, "Think of a hole in the ground - that is nothing". So the scribe carefully writes "0" to describe the hole. A neat Urban Legend, if nothing else.
There used to be an "American University" in Beirut, mostly staffed by Western professors, but most of its staff has been run off by the Islamofascists. When Rockefeller made millions on oil he set out to create universities and libraries. I don't know of a single Islamic Rockefeller, even though there are plenty of oil rich Muslims, particularly in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.
The only electronics they need is the cell phone to detonate IEDs. If they had to use what Arabs have invented in the past thousand years, they'd be reduced to running over people with their camels.
LOL! Good one.
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