Unanswered questions... when 100 people sharing a single computer, does each count as having access? What about people with slow dial-up bandwidth who cannot even download photos? What about people who have access but cannot read or write the languages the internet is written in? What about people who live in nations that censor the internet, or which have intermittent electricity and blinky bandwidth?
Irregardless, it's an important statistic because, as I've mentioned many times, the rate of growth in developing nations (the 3B3K nations, those earning about $3K per capita in GDP) is ten times the rate of growth as OECD nations. They are not achieving this rate of access with brand new $600 PCs and monitors (20% of annual income).
[Note: I should have said "have not been achieving"... in the past decade. Adam Minter just sent a link to this article - that per IDC, after a decade as the destination for old PCs - China now surpasses the USA in purchases of NEW PCs. New PC sales to Chinese buyers surpassed 18.5 million in 2Q 2011]Roughly 50% of the cost of an internet machine (PC, tablet, latpop, etc.) is the display device. The 30% rate of internet access worldwide was built in large part on exports of used computers and, especially, used display devices. There is indeed an environmental justice issue here. But it is not the environmental justice issue being embraced by the anti-export watchdogs.
