We all use email, no? Every day we send and read hundreds of them at work, and in our private lives, too, email has become a significant part of our communications tools.
Well, no, actually.
At least not in the higher spheres of politics and government, that is. I posted earlier about how the Dutch leadership has a very awkward relation with electronic communication and data storage. In a week’s time, however, MSNBC and the BBC report that the US Secretaries of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, and of Homeland Security, Michael Chertoff, and Tony Blair’s former media adviser Alastair Campbell have never ever sent a single email message.
OK, there are security issues, but these people must have other things to do than just handle state secrets all day? Not so.
It could be right though, because I found this post quoting this blog about this article regarding a Choimisiún Craolacháin na hÉireann survey (overkill, I know, it’s just so that unbelievers can check my sources), claiming only 40% of the Irish use email. And that includes Dublin. Email isn’t that widespread as I thought then.
I couldn’t find any figures about email usage specifically, but on nationmaster.com they have a good statistics about internet usage in general. Let’s assume that when you have internet access, you have a computer, and therefore in all likelihood have at least the option to send emails. It shows that the UK and the US together boast a quarter of the world’s internet connections. If you look at the per capita distribution however, New Zealand, Iceland and Sweden come out highest, with 7 out of 10 people having internet access. The UK is at 10, whereas the US is 18th, with 5.4 out of 10. Sadder figures hail from Congo, Afghanistan and Iraq, which have only 0.000007 to 0.000014 internet connections for every 10 inhabitants. I’m not a mathematics wizzard, but if I’m correct that means you’d need to bring one million people together to find at least one who’s connected. See, these poor sods have an excuse.
