BBC Learnings · Section 2

Connecting remote communities

Now, if you're old enough to remember the early days of dial-up internet, then you'll know the unforgettable sound of the handshake

Level: B2 · 92 sentences

Transcript

  1. Now, if you're old enough to remember the early days of dial-up internet,
  2. then you'll know the unforgettable sound of the handshake
  3. the clicks and squeaks your computer made
  4. as it struggled to connect to the internet through the telephone line.
  5. Yes, I remember that strange noise.
  6. Dial-up internet was slow and websites took forever to load.
  7. And because you couldn't use both the internet and the telephone at the same time,
  8. this was usually followed by someone shouting, get off the computer!
  9. I'm making a phone call!
  10. In the 30 years since then, the internet has changed dramatically.
  11. Fibre optics and broadband have created super-fast internet speeds and an interconnected online world,
  12. where physical distances between people are no longer a barrier to communication – a situation expressed in the phrase,
  13. the global village.
  14. But take a closer look
  15. and you'll still find people around the world with a slow connection
  16. or no internet at all.
  17. In this programme,
  18. we'll be finding out about how some communities
  19. are working together to fix their internet connection problems
  20. for the benefit of local people.
  21. And of course, we'll be learning some new vocabulary too.
  22. But before that, I have a question for you, Sam.
  23. We've been talking about the early days of the internet,
  24. but do you know the name of the first ever internet browser,
  25. the engine for searching websites?
  26. Was it A, Ask Jeeves, B, World Wide Web or See Yahoo?
  27. I'll guess it was See Yahoo.
  28. OK, Sam, we'll find out the answer later.
  29. You might think it's people living in the most remote and isolated places with the greatest difficulty getting online,
  30. but that's not always true.
  31. Even here in the UK, people struggle to connect, including BBC radio listener Katie,
  32. who explained her problem to BBC World Service programme Digital Planet.
  33. Hi, I'm Katie.
  34. I live in Dorset in England.
  35. Our internet can be quite spasmodic here
  36. and I think that that's due to most of our underground cabling
  37. is very old and somewhat dodgy,
  38. tatty and needs replacing.
  39. Katie lives in Dorset, a rural part of South West England.
  40. She describes her internet connection as spasmodic,
  41. suddenly working but only for a short time.
  42. and not in a regular way.
  43. She thinks this is because her internet cables are dodgy – slang for bad or untrustworthy.
  44. A dodgy internet connection might be irritating,
  45. but in other parts of the world the consequences can be more serious.
  46. Ama Hayat is a farmer who lives in the Pakistani Punjab,
  47. one of the country's most fertile regions but also one of the least connected.
  48. His village is a three-hour drive from the nearest town and he can't make a phone call,
  49. even with 2G.
  50. For Ama, basic weather information like knowing
  51. when rain is coming can mean the difference between his crops succeeding or failing.
  52. Without the internet, he doesn't have a reliable weather report.
  53. So the villagers decided to build their own 50-metre-high telephone transmission tower,
  54. linking a network of five villages to the internet.
  55. Here is Amar talking to BBC World Service programme Digital Planet.
  56. We used to do the conventional farming,
  57. like just getting information from the word of mouth.
  58. Now I'm using the latest technologies to have gadgets available with us and taking information right from...
  59. The harsh mouth you can say through internet and the technology we have in our hands.
  60. So this is what I'm doing in my farm practices.
  61. Before the community-built tower brought the internet to his village,
  62. Ama got his weather report by word of mouth,
  63. information passed on by people telling each other.
  64. Now there's stable internet that works thanks to a tower high enough to pick up a telephone signal,
  65. which it then sends into the villages via solar-powered receivers.
  66. a type of gadget, meaning a small electronic device which does something useful.
  67. This means Amr now gets his weather reports straight from the horse's mouth,
  68. an idiom meaning from a reliable source,
  69. or from someone who knows what they're talking about.
  70. The internet brings reliable climatic information,
  71. which means a good harvest not just for Amr and his family,
  72. but for all the families living in the five connected villages.
  73. It's a great example of community action and of people looking after each other.
  74. Something which may have been lost since the early idealistic days of the internet.
  75. And speaking of the early internet, it's time to answer my question.
  76. Remember, I asked you for the name of the very first internet browser.
  77. I guessed it was C, Yahoo, so was I right?
  78. You were wrong, I'm afraid, Sam.
  79. Way back before Google, the first internet browser was called the World Wide Web.
  80. invented by none other than cyber legend Sir Tim Berners-Lee,
  81. who I think would be pleased to hear about Amr's community internet.
  82. Yes. Right, let's recap the vocabulary we've learned
  83. about internet connections between people living at a physical distance
  84. in the modern world something described as the global village.
  85. If your internet is spasmodic, it's irregular – stopping,
  86. then suddenly working for a short time.
  87. In other words, it's dodgy – a slang word meaning bad or unreliable.
  88. If you know something by word of mouth,
  89. it's been passed verbally from person to person.
  90. Whereas if you hear it from the horse's mouth,
  91. it's come directly from a reliable source of information.
  92. And finally, a gadget is a small electronic device with a useful purpose.