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. Shows the similarities and differences of emerging issues and successes surrounding technology development through perspectives from different world regions, allowing readers to make comparisons among the featured countries in each section Provides a brief primer on each technology- and internet-related issue that functions as a baseline for each section Highlights that different countries and populations having similar societal needs often need to make dissimilar technology-related choices, usually due to varying internal and external pressures ranging from social values and political systems to economic needs and developmental goals Includes photographs that help to illuminate the text

Covering more than 80 countries around the world, this book provides a compelling, contemporary snapshot of how people in other countries are using the Internet, social media, and mobile apps. How do people in other countries use the social media platform Facebook differently than Americans do? What topics are discussed on the largest online forum—one in Indonesia, with more than seven million registered users? Why does Mongolia rate in the top-ten countries worldwide for peak Internet speeds? Readers of Online around the World: A Geographic Encyclopedia of the Internet, Social Media, and Mobile Apps will discover the answers to these questions and learn about people's Internet and social media preferences on six continents—outside of the online community of users within the United States. The book begins with an overview of the Internet, social media platforms, and mobile apps that chronologically examines the development of technological innovations that have made the Internet what it is today. The country-specific entries that follow the overview provide demographic information and describe specific events influenced by online communications, allowing readers to better appreciate the incredible power of online interactions across otherwise-unconnected individuals and the realities and peculiarities of how people communicate in today's fast-paced, globalized, and high-technology environment. This encyclopedia presents social media and the Internet in new light, identifying how the use of language and the specific application of human culture impacts emerging technologies and communications, dramatically affecting everything from politics to social activism, education, and censorship.