Examining Internet and Technology around the World

Book excerpt: This book offers comparative insights into the challenges and opportunities surrounding emerging technology and the internet as it is used and perceived throughout the world, providing students with cross-cultural and cross-national perspectives. The United Arab Emirates has a national goal of colonizing Mars by 2117, and China seeks to modernize its entire manufacturing process to produce cutting-edge technologies and research advances by 2025. How are other countries using the internet and emerging technologies to their advantage? This volume in the Global Viewpoints series examines 10 issues pertaining to the internet and technology, including access and censorship, alternative energy technologies, artificial intelligence, autonomous robots, cyberbullying, cybercrime, e-learning, GMOs, online privacy, and virtual and augmented reality. For each topic, the volume features eight country-level perspectives that span the world to allow for comparisons of different nations' specific approaches to the technology or issue. This encyclopedia takes a new direction in understanding the importance and impact of emerging technologies on the world, showing that even when experiencing similar technologically related challenges or advances, these technologies do not form one-size-fits-all solutions for every nation and population. Even when nations develop similar technologies, human dimensions—from policy to social norms to culture—influence people and society across the world differently.