by Robert Bryce
14
THE FASTER THE BITS, THE FREER THE PEOPLE
A decade or so ago, Mohammed Bouazizi’s self-immolation in the small Tunisian town of Sidi Bouzid likely would have gone unnoticed by anyone who didn’t actually live in that dusty little town. Instead, Bouazizi’s suicide in 2010 and, more particularly, the rapid dissemination of images of the protests in Tunisia that followed it, became the “big bang” that ignited the Arab Spring. The turmoil that has resulted continues to this day in Libya, Egypt, Syria, and other countries. The collapse of those Arab regimes is largely the result of our ever-more-connected world. In the age of text messages, Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, and Google, bits of information simply cannot be controlled forever. Bits want to travel, and the Faster they flow, the more we want them to flow.
Thanks to smart phones, Gutenberg’s press now rides in our pockets. The ability to instantly publish photos, video, and other documents bodes well for freedom-minded people everywhere. If there’s one indisputable truth about the Information Age, it’s this: the Faster the bits, the freer and richer the people. The inverse of that statement is also true: the slower the bits, the less free and poorer the people.
As mobile phones, the Internet, and other communication technologies have proliferated, more and more people are able to access, and distribute, more information. The people who live in countries where information is allowed to travel fast and freely are the same ones who can get wealthier and have more liberty.
Meanwhile, the countries that are slowing, or even stopping the bits, are impeding innovation and slowing, or even stopping, their economies. The countries that restrict access to mobile phones, filter or restrict access to the Internet, censor journalists, and restrict academic freedom are imprisoning their people, making themselves poorer and falling further and further behind the rest of the world.
To prove this point, look at Netindex.com, a Web site that lists the places with the fastest broadband speeds. The top ten includes some of the wealthiest locales on earth, including Hong Kong, Singapore, Luxembourg, Japan, and Sweden.1 Moving down the list in broadband speed shows that broadband connectivity almost works as a proxy for per-capita GDP.2
James Fallows, national correspondent for the Atlantic, illustrated that point in a 2012 essay published in the New York Times. He wrote that China’s ongoing efforts to control the flow of information on the Internet is emerging as a major hindrance to that country’s growth. In the United States, Fallows points out that the Internet can be slow due to infrastructure constraints. “In China, it’s slow because of political control: censorship and the ‘Great Firewall’ bog down everything and make much of the online universe impossible to reach. ‘What country ever rode to pre-eminence by fighting the reigning technology of the time?’ a friend asked while I was in China last year. ‘Did the Brits ban steam?’”3
Fallows’s essay underscores the critical difference between the countries that allow bits to move fast and those that try to slow them down. The countries that are succeeding in the modern world are the ones that are facilitating the free flow of people, goods, and ideas. They are promoting Faster connectivity, journalistic independence, and academic freedom. The free flow of information is essential to the process of innovation, which builds wealth.
The close correlation between restricted information flows (slower bits) and poorer people can be seen by looking at North Korea, Cuba, and Iran, all three of which are listed as “authoritarian regimes” in the Democracy Index compiled by the Economist Intelligence Unit.4 Those same three countries were also included in the 2012 list of the “Ten Most Censored Countries” compiled by the Committee to Protect Journalists. The CPJ points out that countries that censor the media have certain commonalities, including “some form of authoritarian rule. Their leaders are in power by dint of monarchy, family dynasty, coup d’état, rigged election, or some combination thereof.”
The CPJ also noted the connection between free-flowing information and wealth. “Lagging economic development is another notable trend among heavily censored nations. Of the ten most censored countries, all but two have per capita income around half, or well below half, of global per capita income . . . The two exceptions are Saudi Arabia and Equatorial Guinea, where oil revenues lead to much higher per capita income than the global level. But both of those countries are beset by vast economic inequities between leaders and citizens.”5
All of the countries on the CPJ’s list work to slow, or even halt, the flow of information to their people. The most obvious example of this is North Korea, a country ruled by what may be the most secretive and despotic regime on the planet. North Korea has a population of about 25 million people but only about one million of them have mobile phones.6 The per-capita GDP of North Korea is $1,800.7 That’s a fraction of the global average per-capita GDP, which in 2012 was $12,500.8
Or consider Cuba, the country that has been run with an iron fist by the Castro brothers, Fidel and Raul, since 1959. Although Cuba has 11.2 million people, only about 10 percent of them have access to mobile phones. In addition, access to the Internet is tightly controlled by the government. In 2011, some 2.6 million Cubans had access to the Internet, but as Reuters notes, almost all of those users “were likely on the local intranet through government-run computer clubs, schools and offices.” Ordinary Cubans cannot access the World Wide Web without government permission.9 The per-capita GDP of Cuba: $10,200, again, lower than the average for the world.
Or consider Iran, which ranks 159th in the Democracy Index out of 167 countries on the list. The Iranian regime, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, “uses mass imprisonment of journalists as a means of silencing dissent and quashing critical news coverage.” In addition, “Iranian authorities maintain one of the world’s toughest Internet censorship regimes, blocking millions of websites, including news and social networking sites.”10 The per-capita GDP of Iran: $13,300. That number is slightly above the world average, but it also reflects Iran’s oil and gas resources.
The Committee to Protect Journalists’ List of Ten Most Censored Countries (2012)
1. Eritrea
2. North Korea
3. Syria
4. Iran
5. Equatorial Guinea
6. Uzbekistan
7. Burma
8. Saudi Arabia
9. Cuba
10. Belarus
Source: The Committee to Protect Journalists.
In 2012, the theocrats who control Iran launched an effort to create a “Halal” Internet. (“Halal,” which means “lawful” in Arabic, refers to the things that are permissible under Islamic law.) According to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Iranian ministry of telecommunications decreed that a number of domestic institutions, “including banks, telecom companies, insurance firms, and universities are now prohibited from dealing with emails that do not come from an ‘ir’ domain name. This could mean that customers who use foreign email clients such as Gmail, Yahoo!, and Hotmail will have to switch to domestic Iranian accounts, which are subject to Iranian legal jurisdiction.”11 In other words, the Iranian regime isn’t content with merely blocking Web sites and prohibiting access to the World Wide Web; it also is insisting that the country’s biggest institutions use only the “ir” domain for e-mail, which will then make it easier for the state to surveil its citizens’ communications.
Comparing the wealth of countries that have Faster flows of information with those who actively try to slow information flows requires us to combine data sets from several organizations. In addition to the CPJ’s list of most-censored countries, there are the OpenNet Initiative (ONI), which tracks Internet censorship and surveillance, and the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), which ranks countries based on their citizens’ access and ability to use information and communications technology.12
In its 2011 survey, the OpenNet Initiative named thirty-three countries that have selective, substantial, or pervasive monitoring of political communi
cations. Those countries range from very wealthy countries like Qatar, with an average per-capita GDP of $104,000, to poor ones like Yemen (per-capita GDP of $2,300).13 As a group, those countries are poorer than the countries that do not restrict their citizens’ communications. The thirty-three countries that ONI says are surveilling their citizens had an average per-capita GDP of $13,815. That’s slightly above the global average, but still dramatically less than the countries that have free and open access to telecommunications.
As can be seen in the adjacent graphic, the countries with good access to telecommunications, as ranked by the ITU in 2011, are far richer than the global average. The top twenty-five countries on the ITU’s list have an average per-capita GDP of $41,068, while the bottom twenty-five countries have an average per-capita GDP of just $1,616.14 Furthermore, the countries that restrict access to the Internet (as tracked by ONI) or censor journalists (as tracked by the CPJ) are poorer than the countries where bits are allowed to flow Faster. The punch line here is apparent: free-flowing information is critical to human development and the creation of wealth.
People everywhere want to communicate. Just look at the incredible surge in mobile phone use; that surge is a direct result of Smaller Faster Cheaper phones. In 2000, fewer than one billion people on the planet had access to cell phones. By mid-2012, according to the World Bank, the world had more than six billion mobile phone subscribers. And of that number, nearly five billion were living in developing countries.15
The Faster the Bits the Wealthier the People
This graphic shows the correlation between economic well-being and information flows. The bar on the left shows the average per-capita GDP of the countries that rank highest in the International Telecommunications Union’s survey of access to high-quality communication services. The bars to the right show the drastically lower incomes for people living in countries where information flows are restricted and journalists are censored. Sources: Country rankings from the International Telecommunications Union’s ICT Development Index; ONI Political Monitoring of the Internet Index; and CPJ’s Ten Most Censored Country Ranking.
Faster flows of information are also critical for education. As the speed of information flows on the Internet has increased, so have the educational opportunities. Broadband Internet access is allowing students all over the world to have access to libraries, articles, and instructors who just a few years ago were simply unavailable. The innovation that is occurring in online education is shaking up traditional education, and is doing so at a time when innovation in education is sorely needed.
Smaller Lighter Cheaper Phones
In 1984, New York City had about a thousand mobile telephones. Due to the lack of bandwidth, only a dozen of them could be used at any one time.16 At that time, one of the only cell phone options was Motorola’s DynaTAC 8000X, which was commonly known as “the brick.” The phone weighed 2 pounds (907 grams), allowed about thirty minutes of talk time, and came with a price tag of $3,995.17 (That’s about $8,300 in current dollars.) In addition to its heft, the phone was huge, taking up nearly 80 cubic inches, or about 1,311 cubic centimeters.18
Today, one of the most popular mobile phones on the market is the Samsung Galaxy S3. It weighs 133 grams, allows 22 hours of talk time, and takes up about 83 cubic centimeters.19 By late 2012, consumers could find unlocked Galaxy S3 phones on Amazon for about $600.20 And some mobile phone companies were selling the phone for about $200 if the buyer agreed to a two-year contract.21
Thus, over the past three decades, an average mobile phone is about 16 times smaller and 7 times lighter than “the brick” of yesteryear. Better still, it’s about 14 times cheaper and allows 44 times more talk time.22
15
FROM MONKS TO MOOCS
FASTER CHEAPER EDUCATION
In December 2012, Johnny Manziel, a quarterback from Texas A&M University, was awarded the Heisman Trophy, the most prestigious individual award in college football. He was the first freshman to win the Heisman. Two months later, Manziel announced that he would not be attending any on-campus classes at Texas A&M.
Manziel wasn’t quitting school. Nor was he making a break for the National Football League. Instead, he was opting to do his coursework online. The move was made out of necessity. Manziel had enrolled in an on-campus English course at Texas A&M, but his celebrity disrupted the class. “It was a small class of 20 or 25—and it kind of turned into more of a big deal than I thought,” he said.1
Precious few college students have to contend with the demands of autograph-seeking peers. But Manziel’s decision to forgo on-campus classes in favor of online learning is part of trend that is shaking the education system to its roots. Thanks to the Internet, education is Faster Cheaper than ever before. Students interested in a certain subject, say, geometry, no longer need to reserve a spot in a class that meets at specific times at a specific location in order to study right angles, tangents, and parallelograms. With online education providers like Khan Academy, the geometry teacher—and all of the teacher’s lectures—are available on demand, 24/7/365, in any location equipped with an Internet connection.
Online learning—whether it’s a lesson on tying a bow tie or mastering differential equations—is giving more people access to high-quality education than ever before. We’ve gone from monks to MOOCs. We’ve gone from a system in which only the wealthy could afford tutors and books (dutifully hand-copied by monks) to a system where nearly everyone on the planet can, in theory, have access to some of the world’s best teachers through massive open online courses (MOOCs). We’ve gone from the days of the aristocracy, where one educator taught one student, to MOOCs for the masses. In 2011, about 160,000 students in 190 countries enrolled in a free online course on artificial intelligence that was taught at Stanford University by two experts in the field, Peter Norvig and Sebastian Thrun.2 That’s not unusual. Another MOOC—also offered by Stanford in 2011, on machine learning—had a total class registration of 104,000; that’s roughly twice the population of Enid, Oklahoma.3 (For some of the leaders in online learning, see Appendix D.)
Of course, it’s easier to register for a free class than it is to complete it. Of the 104,000 students who registered for Stanford’s course on machine learning, only 13,000 completed the class work. Therein lies one of the many problems with MOOCs: high dropout rates. Add in the potential for cheating on exams, difficulty with proper grading, and the lack of personal interaction with the teacher, and the MOOCs begin to lose some of their shine. Perhaps the thorniest problem is accreditation. Sure, you may have completed the course on machine learning, but you didn’t pay for it. And a school like Stanford, one of the most prestigious schools in the United States, is not eager to undermine its lofty reputation by allowing just anyone to claim that Stanford has stamped his or her educational passport. The move toward MOOCs may force schools to move away from a system based solely on traditional degree programs and toward a model based on competence. Some aspects of that system already exist with CLEP—short for College-Level Examination Program—which allows students to get college credit by passing tests that demonstrate their proficiency in various subjects.4
While there are many problems that must be addressed, it’s also obvious that MOOCs and online learning are coming of age at the same time that much of the American education system—in particular, America’s colleges and universities—is foundering on an outmoded business model, soaring costs, and woefully deficient results.
Student loan debt in the United States has surpassed $1 trillion, an amount that exceeds total US credit card debt. Tuition at both public and private schools continues to soar. A 2012 study by Bain & Company found that “annual tuition increases several times the rate of inflation have become commonplace” and yet, despite the higher costs being imposed on students, “a growing percentage of our colleges and universities are in real financial trouble.”5
In 1970, the average tuition at a public, four-year college was $358 per semester and took abou
t 4 percent of median family income. By 2010, that tuition figure had soared to $6,695, and the share of median family income had jumped to about 11 percent. If tuition increases had matched the rate of inflation over that same time frame, tuition would have been just $2,052.6 (The rate of increase for private institutions was even higher than that for public schools.)
Furthermore, the size of the college-age population is falling.7 In 2011, the number of US high school graduates peaked at 3.4 million and has begun to decline. That decline has resulted in declining college enrollments: in the first half of 2013, US college enrollment dropped by 2.3 percent compared with the same period in 2012.7
The emergence of online learning has led to some dire predictions. In 2013, Clayton Christensen, a professor at the Harvard Business School who has written extensively on his theory of “disruptive innovation,” predicted that in “fifteen years maybe half of the universities will be in bankruptcy, including the state schools.” Christensen said that for “three hundred years education wasn’t disruptible because there wasn’t a technological core.” That is, there wasn’t a new method of providing education services that could replace the old business model. Online learning, he said, brings a new technological core to the table and it “truly is going to kill us,” with the “us” being traditional universities.8