Foresight
Caring For Those Left Behind
Although significant progress has been made positive change has limited…
Read moreTitle: Off grid
Author: Future Agenda | https://www.futureagenda.org
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https://www.futureagenda.org/foresights/off-grid/
People living off-grid, by inequality or choice, can exacerbate societal division or improve privacy, health and wellbeing. Either way, doing so provides fertile ground for innovation.
The world and humanity are unquestionably more connected than ever before. The Industrial and Technological revolutions have transformed our ability to both travel and communicate. From cars and planes, to email, mobile telephony and social media, the world has become smaller. According to Internet.org 90% of the world’s population lives within range of a mobile signal and 3 billion people in 2015 are connected to the Internet. It’s worth noting that this impressive statistic also means that 60% of the world’s population has yet to be connected to the Internet.
Counter to this onslaught of increased possibilities to connect and remain connected a number of people are living off-grid. This has the potential to improve wellbeing or to further increase societal division and strain. It also provides new commercial opportunities for organisations that are willing to cater for the off-grid consumer.
There are three drivers behind off-grid living. The first and most obvious is inequality of access. The barriers to access are principally quality of infrastructure (can I get on?), affordability (can I afford to get on?) and relevance (is it relevant for me to get on?). Inequality of access applied not only to the Internet, but also to access to education and healthcare. A key consequence of inequality of access can be increased social inequality as the divide between the haves and the have-nots diverges. Thomas Picketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century ably describes the evolution of inequality in our mostly capitalist world, while the UN’s Sustainable Development Goal 10 is aimed squarely at reducing inequality within and among countries.
The second driver of off-grid living is the positive choice of individuals to be off-grid. Driven by economic, political, social, cultural, mental, trust and privacy concerns or other motivations, increasing numbers of people are opting or buying out. For many, as data becomes more ubiquitous, they are actively choosing to avoid the digital ecosystem or in some cases to hide from it. For others, this is about self-sufficiency and resilience. Being off-grid can be a permanent or temporal choice. Many individuals, families and communities now elect to be temporarily off grid, for example choosing a digital detox to cut down screen and web time, to improve social, health, wellbeing and educational outcomes. Increasingly governments are aware of the public health benefits of choosing to switch off, for example the US President’s Challenge on screen time.
Read more90 %
of the world’s population lives within range of a mobile signal
60 %
of the world’s population yet to be connected to the Internet
From
The World In 2025