The Next Billion Users: Digital Life Beyond the West

by Payal Arora

A digital anthropologist examines the online lives of millions of people in China, India, Brazil, and across the Middle East—home to most of the world’s Internet users—and discovers that what they are doing is not what we imagine.

New-media pundits obsess over online privacy and security, cyberbullying, and revenge porn, but do these things really matter in most of the world? The Next Billion Users reveals that many assumptions about Internet use in developing countries are wrong.

After immersing herself in factory towns, slums, townships, and favelas, Payal Arora assesses real patterns of Internet usage in India, China, South Africa, Brazil, and the Middle East. She finds Himalayan teens growing closer by sharing a single computer with common passwords and profiles. In China’s gaming factories, the line between work and leisure disappears. In Riyadh, a group of young women organizes a YouTube fashion show.

Why do citizens of states with strict surveillance policies appear to care so little about their digital privacy? Why do Brazilians eschew geo-tagging on social media? What drives young Indians to friend “foreign” strangers on Facebook and give “missed calls” to people? The Next Billion Users answers these questions and many more. Through extensive fieldwork, Arora demonstrates that the global poor are far from virtuous utilitarians who mainly go online to study, find jobs, and obtain health information. She reveals habits of use bound to intrigue everyone from casual Internet users to developers of global digital platforms to organizations seeking to reach the next billion Internet users.

Genres: Nonfiction, Technology, Sociology, Business, Internet

280 pages, Hardcover

First published February 25, 2019

About the author

Payal Arora is the author of the award-winning Leisure Commons: A Spatial History of Web 2.0 and Dot Com Mantra: Social Computing in the Central Himalayas and is Associate Professor in the School of History, Culture, and Communication at Erasmus University Rotterdam. She has research and consulting experience in both the private and public sectors, including with Kellogg, the World Bank, Christie’s, Shell, hp, GE, the Ministry of Education in Jordan, Siemens, and UNESCO.

Reviews

[Rama Rao · Rating 2 out of 5]

Choosing the Digital Life in a Chaotic World

There are numerous books in literature about the perils and promises of the digital and social-media revolution. Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Snap Chat, weblogs, smartphones and distance-learning have impacted the culture of global youth, especially those from developing countries. Some of these changes are regarded as breakthroughs in education, information gathering, and human progress. But authors like Arora argue that the digital divide has helped create a climate of false sense of reality. Declining reading habits, no time for schoolwork, withering attention spans, and unhealthy effects of peer pressure on young people of poorer countries have caused insecurities. Addiction to games, entertainment, and pornography appears to make them happy. Digital social networks like Facebook have enabled low-income youths to break free of traditional social norms to pursue their passions. On the other side of the spectrum, users of social media have drawn the attention of the corporate companies who seduce them with advertising just like they do with users in the West. Facebook has become an equalizer between the rich and the poor in online corporate marketing.

The author believes that the poor do not need more innovation if it is a proxy for pilot projects. They are better off without them, and without motivated communities, technology will not succeed, says author Arora! Liberal professors like Arora believe that corporations must get more involved in societal issues facing developing countries. Her motivations and beliefs are less helpful to countries like India and Brazil. She frequently refers to the so-called slums of India and Brazil, but slums also exist in Europe and North America. She is familiar with slums of San Francisco and must have seen the Skid Row district of Los Angeles. Her solutions to the problems of technology for poor is like Nike’s “Just Do It” right campaign. She comes short on the measures social media must take to educate the poor kids of India and Brazil. But corporations also have responsibilities to its stockholders, and the community they serve. There should be a balance between the two strategies. One dictates the other!

Technology creates our world; it creates wealth, economy, and our way of living. Does technology, like biological life, evolve? Researchers at the Santa Fe Institute in New Mexico have concluded that the answer is, Yes! Pioneering technology thinker and economist W. Brian Arthur answers these questions in his book “The Nature of Technology: What It Is and How It Evolves.” Branching networks are found at every level in biology from a single cell to the ecosystem. Human-made networks could share the same features; and if they don't, then it might be profitable to make them do so! That is how technology evolves! Nature's patterns tend to arise from economical solutions. Evolution propagates this flourishing organization. It creates new niches into existing organism or human technology. This respectively creates new creatures or new technology. There is a parallel in evolution in biology and economics, and Brian Arthur and Santa Fe Institute in New Mexico have been more convinced in this little idea that many of us overlook.

This book is very narrative about the negative impact of social media on third world. The author gets very preachy but little on solutions. Do not expect much from this book as it does not add anything new to the burgeoning literature that is already cluttered with unwanted gospels of hypocrisy.

[Hyeonjin · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was very much looking forward to reading this book based on the title. As someone who wants to learn more about the pros and cons of the technology industry getting involved in global development, the title seemed perfectly relevant.

What I got instead was a one-sided criticism of technological innovation in development and an argument for less technology, less pilots, less trial & error. While I agree with some of her criticisms, I felt that 1) she gave virtually no voice to the other side of the argument (I could easily think of various counter arguments to her points while reading), and 2) she nitpicked anecdotes and evidence that painted technological advancement in a very poor light.

While I think everyone can agree that technological advancement has its downsides, I think most of society tends to believe that the upsides tend to outweigh the downsides - and Arora (in my opinion) needed to dismantle that assumption first if there was any chance of convincing me of the other arguments in this book.

In summary, I think it’s really easy to criticize and point fingers, but hard to provide solutions. In this book, Arora demonstrates how easily she can point out the flaws of Silicon Valley’s attempts at bridging the Digital Divide, but gives no real solutions to how we could achieve better outcomes.

[Aanchal · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book debunks supposed online behavioural trends about the global south, set by the west. It's imperative to divulge more into this side of digitalization, which is the most neglected yet has the most promising future.

[Joris · Rating 3 out of 5]

There's a lot of valuable descriptions, anecdotes and research results here illustrating how people in emerging markets use smartphones and the internet. This reality is rich, multi-faceted, in some ways different and in many ways similar to the ways people in the "West" use these technologies.

While educational and an interesting topic to me, I did find the writing somewhat woolly and repetitive. The author also spends a lot of the book attacking notions they feel are wrongly held, and counters other researchers, institutions and initiatives, without providing as clear of a plan, set of solutions or illuminating description of reality themselves. There are many helpful observations here, but the overall theme I walk away with is that "the situation is complex and a lot of people get it wrong" -- both true, but not the most helpful of insights.

Another downside here - and the author is not to blame for this - is that technology in emerging markets is evolving rapidly, and insights on internet usage in emerging markets from 5-10 years ago have lost some of their relevance to today's situation.

[Theodore Kinni · Rating 4 out of 5]

Turns out that the online behavior of the global poor isn't all that different from everyone else--and most gov'ts, corps and NGOs don't get it.

[Rebecca · Rating 4 out of 5]

I almost didn’t read this because it’s about 7 years old, and I wondered how relevant it would be. But then I read the introduction and was intrigued enough to keep going.

While the book was obviously published too early to say much about newer fads like AI and cryptocurrency, I have to think many of its observations and arguments are still true today, as the “global poor” Arora discusses were only just dipping their toes into technologies we take for granted. And if anything, her insights about the dark sides of corporatized technology are more prescient than ever.

There is a lot of research presented here, discussed in varying amounts of detail and depth. Some highlights:
- There are multiple barriers institutions need to cross to get people in developing countries to use new technologies: setting up the infrastructure, making the actual computers or cell phones available, and empowering users to use them. The last one is tricky because existing cultural norms, especially gender bias, can get in the way of people using their tech.
- The West is incredibly hypocritical about branding Global South residents as “pirates” and “thieves” when they try to access content from the West. They can’t afford it or even access it otherwise, so who are they hurting by creating their own system of sharing entertainment? The West could make their content cheaper and more localized to legalize this market, but instead they moralize about people sharing content and try to pressure local authorities to harass people who just want to access entertainment.
- Western corporations, especially tech companies, love to test new products and services on the global poor under the guise of philanthropy and corporate responsibility. They’re really just trying to create ways to create and monopolize markets for themselves. The hands of random billionaires (Elon makes an appearance!) fund and reward development projects based on their pet theories, especially about education. The poor don’t need more apps, however much tech billionaires enjoy playing God.

These are all great observations, but Arora’s main point is more obvious and somehow more revolutionary: the poor are people. They use technology much like we do. NGOs provide them with computers and phones, justifying the cost by claiming the poor are virtuous and will only use them to better their circumstances, and then are shocked and horrified when the recipients use them to go on Facebook, play games, and look at porn. This paternalism about poor people, the assumption that they don’t deserve leisure and that they need to be protected from themselves, is just more colonialism. People doing development work will sell literally any narrative about the poor: they’re naive and just need to be steered in the right direction; they’re being lazy by going on Facebook like people in the West do and need to be incentivized to work; they’re latent geniuses that just need a proprietary computer running proprietary software to pull themselves up by their bootstraps, etc etc.

This book wasn’t perfect — I think it devoted a little too much time to the failure of specific educational interventions when I would have liked to learn more about economic ones as well — but it definitely gave me a lot to chew on. I would recommend it to anyone curious about technology-focused international development work.

[Saif · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is an eye-opener in so many ways. Payal Arora tells us a completely different story about how the world's poor, especially people in countries like Brazil, India and China, actually use the internet. Of course, she's not the first one to talk about this subject. But when we hear from aid agencies, NGOs, tech companies and gurus, it's mostly about what they want or hope the internet would be for these Emerging Markets. And they do so for their own reasons, even when they talk about the internet as a tool of "empowerment".

But as Arora shows, the poor have THEIR own reasons for using the internet, and they are vastly different. Internet use is less about economically productive work and more about "unproductive" play. People use it to escape the harsh realities of life, to find love, lust, and leisure. And they are willing to pay for it.

One of my favorite passages in the book is about the difference in perspectives about "innovation". Technology companies view poverty as an opportunity for innovation, even when they talk about listening to the poor about how to innovate. But what the poor need is not more but less innovation. In fact, they are quite adept in making their own "frugal innovations" — small tweaks and fixes to available technology to make it work better for them.

Arora thus shows how technologies become sites of resistance, but in ways that are very different from what scholars imagine digital resistance to mean. Indeed, some of that resistance is directed against those very myths that techno-utopians have created about them.

The implications are immense, not only for Western development agencies, NGOs and corporations but also for local governments in these countries. They have been willing to listen more to Google and Facebook CEOs about what technological progress in their countries should look like. Arora's book shows it's time for them to listen to their own people — "the next billion users".

[Robin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Figuring out the way-out about the digital digest online has gotten much tricky than ever before. Not only because of increasing tons of available materials, both online and offline, but the focused points have been extended to more broadly social implications.

That said, The Next Billion Users: Digital Life Beyond the West is a great book explaining the role or function of the internet and its digital tools beyond the Western contexts. Privacy nowadays is anything but a human right. The information and data behind those applications and dialogues have demonstrated tremendous values as well as posed treats both to the private and the public. For the underprivileged, how the trend of digitalization empowers them to pursue work, study, and self-development while considering (digital) privacy is of meticulous depiction in great detail of this book.

[Valentina Mariño Arboleda · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book maps out the often overlooked narrative of the ‘global south’ and values it as a ‘disruptor’ of Western media industries. You can see how cultural and socio-economic conditions prompt for a use of Internet and Media that goes far beyond all assumptions of the West (..since usually most of the ubiquitous technologies conceived in Silicon Valley result from the standardised needs of non-Western cultures, to the image of Western ones).
Besides introducing you to how the digital is reappropriated across these narratives, it also brings to the surface the underpinning forces that motivate that, and allows you to see how these narratives may be holding the north star for resilient innovation.
I really recommend this book.

[Pushkar Dongare · Rating 4 out of 5]

As someone who has been building a digital product for the next billion users, the focus was on digital literacy, user experience and meeting the metrics. This book was an eye opener. It captures the numerous sociological impacts of the products we are building.

[Sankarshan · Rating 3 out of 5]

https://medium.com/@sankarshan/leisur...

[June _ · Rating 5 out of 5]

Extremely insightful. Beautifully explains the contrasts in the digital environments of Western and Global South countries.

[Abhimanyu Kucheria · Rating 3 out of 5]

Repeatitive

[Lindsey · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting, but rather dry