In this section we provide background on some of the obstacles that BoP populations currently face in becoming part of the global community with access to information technology.
In the economically developed world, access to information technology has been largely through Internet-connected computers. An important benefit of access to the Internet has been the potential for contact with the worldwide community of users. The Usenet network, one of the earliest online discussion venues (created in 1979), supported threaded discussion on a wide variety of topics among participants distributed worldwide. Online communities became very popular in the 1980s and 1990s. For example, the WELL (“Whole Earth ‘Lectronic Link”) was a hybrid face-to-face and online group that served participants in the Bay area of San Francisco, California (Rheingold, 1993). Members of the WELL engaged in discussions of topics of common interest and the forum also served as a means of self-expression. Similar applications could be deployed to BoP communities to enable discussions on topics of local interest, provide a voice for individuals who would otherwise have no forum for their ideas, and enable solutions to communal problems through information exchange.