Why isn't the internet a good enough reason to help develop the "third world"?

[Ryika]

So I've just downloaded 50gb of <adult> image galleries (with about equal amounts of men and women I think - equality!) that I now have to scour for useful poses to build a library that is suited to act as a repository so I can just sit down and do some gesture and pose drawing with random poses that I haven't seen 500 times already. A terrible faith, truly painful, and it made me think: Why do I even have to do this?

Why are there no good, large online libraries that already offer proper services? There are some smaller ones like Quickposes, and Sketchdaily, but their number of images is really limited, and after a few weeks, you've gone through all of them a few times already and it becomes boring. There's also Croquis Cafe which is probably the best resource there is at the moment, but I don't really like their particular style of presentation. (Some would also name posemaniacs I'm sure, but their poses are way too stiff - if you ask me, you should always draw from real models, not figures.)

So that made me think. The real reason for why the industry around posing sites isn't that developed is that not enough people are using them, and why are not enough people using them? Because Africa and similar places are not part of the developed world, obviously. If they were, and had to care less about daily survival, then they could spend part of their day sitting in front of a PC, surfing the internet like I do whenever I can, and that would mean that more of them would start drawing, and that would mean that more people would start using posing sites, which then means posing sites would have more budget to create their own images, and then I would not have to sort out 50gb of <adult> images just to build my own pose library.

The same is true for other online services of course, Twitter, Facebook, Steam... hell, even Civfanatics could benefit greatly from more African visitors I assume. Electronic devices are not produced in African Workshops either, so there's no conflict of interest there I think, unless the guys who own the clothing companies also own the computer companies for some reason. ...which I don't think is the case.

So that leaves me baffled. Why are online companies not doing their best to push the idea that we should do better when it comes to developing the third world? It seems like that's an issue that was popular a while ago, but has sort of been forgotten about in a world that is now all about the little first world problems (such as mine), and bathroom assignments, and gay pride, and whatnot - all important issues, sure, but it does not increase the market, it just gives them a greater part of the existing market, and is certainly nothing compared to the big issues we should solve, such as increasing the availability of online posing libraries by actively helping Africa and similar places to catch up with the first world.

So what am I missing? Why are global companies, especially those that operate mostly on the internet and are thus not forced to invest into new places, not trying to make us expand the market capacity of Africa?

 

[warpus]

These companies are looking to make money. They will focus on countries which have a large number of people with a disposable income, such as the EU, North America, Japan, etc.

Not to say that nobody's focusing on Africa. Chinese companies have been investing a lot on that continent lately. Heck, my friend tried to recently start up a company that would sell a cheap solution to the "help it's dark" problem to Africans. AKA a light source. His company ended up folding due to the issues he had setting up a company in Africa, the corruption he encountered, low margins, etc.

 

[Manfred Belheim]

Maybe they're happy with the billions they already make? And that sounds like rather a large and expensive undertaking too.

 

[Perfection]

Because people are too caught up with whether or not kneeling for the mational anthem is okay to see the bigger picture.

 

[Ryika]

These companies are looking to make money. They will focus on countries which have a large number of people with a disposable income, such as the EU, North America, Japan, etc.

Not to say that nobody's focusing on Africa. Chinese companies have been investing a lot on that continent lately. Heck, my friend tried to recently start up a company that would sell a cheap solution to the "help it's dark" problem to Africans. AKA a light source. His company ended up folding due to the issues he had setting up a company in Africa, the corruption he encountered, low margins, etc.

Yeah, but... Internet companies, right? They don't need to invest into infrastructure, they just have to make sure others construct it so the people there have Internet.

It's like in the game Industry Giant - old, but great game btw - where you construct buildings that make cities grow faster so you can get additional profit in the future, just that you don't actually have to pay for the buildings, you just have to put the thought in people's minds so they complain enough that countries really push to develop Africa etc.

 

[Synobun]

Facebook is already doing this. The planned satellite grid for Africa from Facebook is also waiting for advancements from SpaceX.

 

[dutchfire]

These companies are looking to make money. They will focus on countries which have a large number of people with a disposable income, such as the EU, North America, Japan, etc.

Moreover, Facebook and Google are advertising companies, so they focus on countries where other companies want to advertise. That is often a bit of a (upper-)middle class market.

I believe mobile technology and internet are actually expanding quite rapidly in Africa. Significant parts of the African population live in rather urban environments, where building a mobile network is quite efficient, and there is a huge demand for communication technology. The real poor of course can't afford it, but even the working class in Africa is starting to get access now. That's a huge market even when the margins are tight. Tight margins are more attractive for local players than for foreign corporations.