Marky Zuck wants to connect the earth... to the Internet.
"We want to make it so that anyone, anywhere -- a child growing up in rural India who never had a computer -- can go to a store, get a phone, get online, and get access to all of the same things that you and I appreciate about the Internet,"
Noble! Ok here are my predictions for the first 100 Google searches:
1. How do we get clean drinking water in this place?
2. How do you get rid of rampant and debilitating corruption that leads to mind, soul and body crushing poverty brought on by greed and corporate enslavement?
3. Seriously: How do you shoot down a drone?
4. Where can I get some free antibiotics for my mom?
5. Anyone have free mosquito netting?
6. Where do I sell this Facebook phone thing to buy a gun to shoot the government son-of-a-b*** terrorizing my village or at least some bread to get my family through the next 24 hours?
7. Where do I get a free plane, train, car, bike, skateboard, anything ticket out of here to anywhere?
8. How do I compete with American farm goods when I grow my food right here but it's more expensive all the while trying really hard not to become another coke farmer but secretly still doing it?
9. If we had oil would the UN or U.S. show up and give a crap about how we're dropping like flies?
10. ... (fill in at your discretion)
Ok I have to stop -- you get the point -- more importantly you see how my disturbed mind works: I actually think that the 5 billion people who inhabit earth that aren't Internet connected might need things besides the Internet first. I do get the counter argument: connectivity leads to self-empowerment which leads to ideas and innovations that solve the problems I'm not so subtly referring to above, but I have to be a little cynical here folks. You ever been hungry or thirsty? You ever been dying of hunger or thirst? You ever been dying of hunger and thirst while being gang raped by a totally and impenetrably corrupt social system that has been that way for hundreds of years beginning with a brutal, savage, murderous colonization by the same people now connecting me to this internet thing that is covered in advertisements for things I could never in 16 generations afford one of?
Who knows -- in tandem with smart urban and rural planning, medical attention via a global health and wellness initiative, a global effort to tackle poverty, a global effort to fight social injustice, corruption, greed, starvation, malnutrition, disease and a global movement to force corporations to answer to a basic code of moral ethics greater than the almighty dollar + the Internet everywhere thingy and hey, who knows, maybe we'll survive a few more generations. I'm hopeful, figuratively speaking. And I'm absolutely positive it will help Facebook reach a larger audience, which equals more ad dollars, which makes Facebook richer, on the backs of abject poverty... ah crud, I totally lost focus...