Global Village: if we were just 100 people
A short excerpt from a thought-provoking message which has been widely circulated for international friendship week:
If we could shrink the earth's population to a village of precisely 100 people, with all the existing human ratios remaining the same, it would look something like this:
There would be:
57 Asians 21 Europeans
14 people from the Western Hemisphere, both north and south
8 Africans
52 would be female 48 would be male
70 would be non-white 30 would be white
70 would be non-Christian 30 would be Christian
89 would be heterosexual 11 would be homosexual
6 people would possess 59% of the entire world's wealth, and all 6 would be from the United States.
80 would live in substandard housing
70 would be unable to read
50 would suffer from malnutrition
1 would be near death
1 would have a college education
1 would own a computer
Most would know the danger of battle, the loneliness of imprisonment, the agony of torture, or the pangs of starvation.
25 would have food in the refrigerator, clothes on their back and a roof overhead.
8 would have money in the bank, in their wallet or change in a dish some where
Digital divide
Basic facts
- The United States has more computers than the rest of the world combined.
- South Asia, with 23% of the world's people, has less than 1% of the world's internet users.
- The typical internet user worldwide is male, under 35 years old, with a university education and high income, urban based and English speaking- a member of a very elite minority.
- A computer costs the average Bangladeshi more than eight year's income, compared with one month's wage for the average American.
- English is used in almost 80% of websites. Yet fewer than one in 10 people worldwide speaks the language.
Download PDF version of this page