1 in 25 of All Humans Ever have Accessed the Internet

The Numbers:

All humans, ever: ~117.0 billion*

All humans, 2022: 7.9 billion

Internet users, 2022: 5.3 billion

* Population Research Bureau estimate, 2021

What They Mean:

Posted three weeks ago, the “Declaration for the Future of the Internet” joins the Biden administration and 60 other governments in an attempt to define the principal challenges to the digital future and set a direction for policies to address them. A few bits of data first:

According to the International Telecommunications Union, 4.9 billion people around the world used the Internet last year. A less official update from WorldInternetStats.com this spring finds 5.3 billion. This is just over two-thirds of the world’s 7.9 billion people, up from 50% at the end of the Obama administration, and about 1% in faraway 2000. Put another way, demographers at the Population Research Bureau calculate the total human population since the origin of the human species about 300,000 years ago at 117 billion. If this is about right, today’s Internet users make up one in 25 of all the men, women, and children who have ever lived. This year they will:

· transfer roughly 100 zettabytes of data around the world via fiber-optic cable and satellite beam. (A zettabyte is 1 sextillion bytes. The European Space Agency believes the universe contains somewhere between 100 sextillion and 1,000 sextillion stars.)

· conduct $26.7 trillion in electronic commerce, by UNCTAD’s 2022 estimate. (The International Monetary Fund believes global GDP this year is $103 trillion.)

· and spend 4.2 trillion hours on social media. (This sums to 479 million years, roughly the time elapsed since the “Cambrian Explosion." Alternatively, the longest recorded single lifespan, that of Arles resident Jeanne Calment, 1873-1998, was 0.00000000012 trillion years.)

Another way to put these figures in context: at the birth of the Internet somewhere in the 1980s, a statistician might count a few million bytes of data transferred across early computer networks, about $0 in electronic commerce, and a few thousand academics and government officials berating each other on electronic bulletin-boards.

So, quite a remarkable first generation.

After appropriately noting this fact and recognizing the scientific and technical achievement that enabled it, the Declaration for the Future of the Internet focuses on (a) emerging policy challenges for the second generation, and (b) the values and goals that should inform a response to them. Top concerns include: escalating use of digital technologies, in some cases by governments, for disinformation and cybercrime; spread of national firewalling and restriction of information, also by governments; fears among many users of loss of privacy and eroding ability to control personal data, whether to governments, unscrupulous businesses, or criminals; and abuse of online platforms to inflame conflict, undermine respect for human rights, and threaten groups vulnerable to prejudice and hate.

The Declaration offers no specific technical measures or agreements to address these concerns, nor new venues in which governments and/or “multistakeholder” fora should develop them. Instead, it sets out a long-term objective — “an environment that reinforces our democratic systems and promotes active participation of every citizen in democratic processes, secures and protects individuals’ privacy, maintains secure and reliable connectivity, resists efforts to splinter the global Internet, and promotes a free and competitive global economy” — and proposes five general principles to inform the actual policies that might deliver this:

1. “Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms,” including combatting online violence and exploitation, reducing illegal content, and protecting freedom of expression.

2. “A Global Internet,” in which governments are discouraged from restricting access to lawful content, or shutting down access generally or to specific types of information, and encouraged to support free flows of data, cooperate in research and development, and act responsibly themselves.

3. “Inclusive and Affordable Access,” including through closing digital divides, encouraging diverse cultural and multilingual content, and supporting digital literacy and skills for publics.

4. “Trust in the Digital Ecosystem,” involving common responsibilities to combat cybercrime, protect personal data, use trustworthy technologies, avoid attacks on elections, support open trade and fair markets, and minimize digital contributions to climate change emissions.

5. “Multistakeholder governance,” to support technical advance and avoid undermining technical infrastructure.