Just as you can learn to drive a car without having to learn to make one (but would prefer that whoever built the car had relevant training!), different roles in the Internet ecosystem require different skills.
From academics researching how to strengthen our online privacy to librarians learning how to maintain community networks to tech enthusiasts learning new coding languages, uncovering and sharing knowledge is crucial to running the Internet.
How Does Academia Help Run the Internet
Universities and academic institutions play a critical role in educating people about the Internet. They also help to train, cultivate, and support the next generation of the Internet technical community.
Every year, young people flock to classrooms around the world to develop their technical skills. Tech-focused majors like computer science, cybersecurity, and information science have become significantly more popular in recent years, and coding classes are more common across a variety of majors.
Academic institutions also act as hubs for research and innovation, with students and faculty producing studies, papers, and valuable educational resources.
Researchers at these institutions can help us have a safer online experience by studying online threats, analyzing how to avoid them, and sharing their findings online. Researchers also prototype and demonstrate hardware and software solutions that benefit the Internet.
While academia helps run the Internet, the Internet also helps run academia: academic databases and repositories, scientific journals, and specialized search engines support academic work every day. There are even national research and education networks (NRENs) around the world that are specifically set up to support education.
The Internet is an extremely valuable educational tool due to the wealth of resources that exist online, the ease of searching for information, and its ability to connect us to knowledge sharers worldwide.
How Do Banks and Financial Institutions Help Run the Internet?
Multilateral development banks provide funding and technical assistance to member states to promote access to and use of the Internet for socioeconomic development. This includes supporting Internet-related education and capacity-building initiatives.
The World Bank, for example, acknowledges that people need to be able to safely and productively use the Internet, and supports projects that advance digital literacy.
Smaller financial institutions at the national level may do the same. For instance, Truist Financial Corporation funded our Expanding Potential in Communities (EPIC) grant program, which supports local connectivity initiatives.
EPIC grant recipient Wave 7 provides digital skills training for senior citizens at the Community of Hope Center in Enfield, North Carolina. The EPIC grant also funded a tower on the Matthew Gilbert Middle School campus in Jackson, Florida, providing students with free Internet access.
What Is the Internet Society Doing to Support Internet Education?
We’ve been in the business of Internet education since 1992. In person and online, we have trained more than 140,000 learners in areas such as Internet technology and connectivity, Internet security, building and maintaining infrastructure, Internet governance, and advocacy.
Our chapters hold a variety of independent trainings around the world to meet the unique needs of their communities. Our Mexico Chapter, for instance, held a series of in-person trainings for older adults last year on Internet safety and avoiding scams.
Since 1993, we have also hosted the annual Network and Distributed System Security (NDSS) Symposium, one of the world’s leading security conferences. The symposium fosters information exchange among researchers and practitioners of network and distributed system security.
Education is at the heart of much of our work, and it helps ensure its sustainability. When we deploy a community network, our work isn’t done once the community is connected. We also educate community members on how to manage and troubleshoot the network themselves.
After supporting the creation of the Everest Community Network in Nepal, for example, we returned to the villages of Khunde and Khumjung to provide locals with six days of technical training on computer and fiber networks.
In this way, education helps support independence and self-sufficiency for newly connected populations.
The Bottom Line
Without educators, connectivity would cease to be meaningful. Deploying a fiber network to a rural community doesn’t help anyone if the people there don’t know how to use the Internet or can’t navigate and maintain it safely.
Educators who share their expertise help ensure that the Internet truly is for everyone, not just the technologists and engineers who understand how everything works. With just a few simple Internet skills, anyone can unlock knowledge, whether they’re a young student or a rural farmer.