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From: billy@vaxb.acs.unt.edu
Newsgroups: comp.society.development
Subject: Re: Nets and Reality
Message-ID: <1991Jun3.120120.47250@vaxb.acs.unt.edu>
Date: 3 Jun 91 11:55:20 GMT
References: <1991Jun1.103409.6738@ims.alaska.edu>
Organization: University of North Texas
Lines: 20

In article <1991Jun1.103409.6738@ims.alaska.edu>, asfjp@acad2.alaska.edu (Fred Polsky V1.0) writes:
> 
> One thing I've noticed is that while we are having this movement to extend the
> net to just about everywhere, how many people are currently on the net? A
> couple hundred thousand, maybe? In a planet of 5 billion, that's a fairly small
> percentage... The importance of extending the net eludes me a bit...
> 
The latest USENET estimate is 1.4 million USENET readers with over 6 million
accounts on these machines.  Of course, you have several things to consider
like users with more than one account, those who rarely read news, and that 
USENET is not the whole net.  I think saying that 2 million people are actively
involved in the USENET/Internet/BITNET lists would be an accurate number.  This
still amounts to .04% of the world population, but it is rapidly growing.

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Billy Barron                  Bitnet : BILLY@UNTVAX
VAX/Unix Systems Manager      THENET : NTVAX::BILLY
University of North Texas   Internet : billy@vaxb.acs.unt.edu
                                SPAN : UTSPAN::UTADNX::NTVAX::BILLY
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