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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   6179 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for March 12, 2023

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

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What are the places in the world today with the lowest digital penetration? Are there still any particular places you could go and see hardly any cellphones?

Depends how large you're allowing a place to be for you question. Certainly there's Amish/Mennonite communities who don't use mobile phones.

You could probably find various tribes in the jungle Amazon, Papua New Guinea and maybe the Congo Jungle (I'm not just referring to the completely uncontacted tribes) who use very little technology, period. Maybe some nomadic or semi-nomadic peoples in Sahara/Sahel and the Eurasian Steppe (Mongolia?) I'm starting to run out of places. Some small groups in the Himalayas, Yunnan Mountains etc maybe? Extremely remote Laos? There's probably more tiny groups in other really remote and inaccessible areas but let's call it there.

To some extent I'm also wondering if even those places, are still like that. My mental image of the situation is that even those remnants, which I've had some awareness of for a long time, are on their way to being digitized as well.

Not really a question for you in particular - I just wonder how we'd even know if that had happened.

You are probably correct, I was mostly just grasping at straws (though I am reasonably confident at least as far as Amazon and PNG are concerned)

I’ve been to the poorest villages in India and the Philippines. Literally beyond the edge of civilization. Cell phones everywhere. You’d have to go to certain regilious communitities to really get what you’re after. And it’s probabaly invite only.

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