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The internet recently passed a milestone: its billionth user ventured online. Yet the idea that we all work and play on a common global internet is merely an illusion. In reality, the web is becoming ever more fragmented, and international borders are increasingly visible online. More and more web pages are appearing in languages other than English. China has more than 130 million internet users and is starting to play by its own rules. Soon to follow are the Middle East, India, Russia and Brazil. Is the technology that we thought was uniting us really dividing us? Global blogging expert Ethan Zuckerman is concerned, but optimistic. Gregory T. Huang spoke with Zuckerman about the future of the global web and its next billion users.

What鈥檚 happening to the internet as it becomes truly global?

There is what I call the problem of the internets. We are very used to this notion that we live on one common internet. It might be slower in some places than others, but it鈥檚 basically the same thing. That鈥檚 not true any more, and it hasn鈥檛 been true for a while. It stopped being true when the French and Germans started censoring neo-Nazi sites, and even more so when China put up an effective firewall to block certain websites. The robust internet industry in China is not oriented to the whole world as a market, but really just to China as a market. That sort of thing is changing how the internet as we know it works.

How are its demographics changing?

If you look at how many people are on the internet, we鈥檝e just surpassed one billion. It鈥檚 mostly North America, China, western Europe, South Korea, Japan and little bits elsewhere. The next billion are most likely calling from Brazil, Russia, India, South Africa and more from China 鈥� the developing-world powers. A few other African countries are also coming up fast. This is going to be really different. Once you start getting lots of people who speak Chinese on the internet, for instance, they don鈥檛 necessarily need to learn English to interact. They won鈥檛 post in English.

Hasn鈥檛 this happened already?

We鈥檝e already seen this a bit with Orkut, the social networking service. Brazilians took to Orkut in a big way, and they ended up taking it over in a way that worried other users. American users started saying, 鈥淪top using Portuguese, this is an English service, an American service!鈥� In fact, it鈥檚 a profoundly non-English service 鈥� it was designed to let people cross international lines. Orkut was the name of the Turkish programmer who put it together. But that is the assumption we have built into the first billion internet users: that as people get to the point in economic development where they can join the internet, surely they鈥檒l know English. Surely they鈥檒l have the same basic cultural values and such.

Clearly that鈥檚 not the case.

The next billion users will not look like that. They will be a very different group of people, less willing to speak a common language. They will have different cultures and sensitivities. Things like the Danish cartoon scandal will become routine. People will fight about things. We鈥檙e not ready for it, but it鈥檚 happening.

鈥淭he next billion users will have different cultures and sensitivities. We鈥檙e not ready鈥�

How are all these people going to get online?

The next billion will get online using smart phones with screens and keyboards, lower-cost PCs and increasingly cheap laptops. But to get the third and fourth billion, it鈥檚 going to get a little crazy. That鈥檚 where programmes like Nicholas Negroponte鈥檚 鈥渙ne laptop per child鈥� come into play. When you get to the point where 3 billion people are online, including all the world鈥檚 schoolkids creating content and hacking your sites, blogging, sharing photos and music, that will be a really interesting brave new world.

You鈥檝e made an effort to bring together voices from different countries and cultures on the internet.

In 2004 I co-founded Global Voices at the Berkman Center with Rebecca MacKinnon. Global Voices is an aggregator of global blogs, a newswire of great posts from around the world. It is put together by regional editors who are following what鈥檚 going on in their communities. This is the only way to keep track of global blogs. We make it available for English-speaking audiences. Mainstream media miss stories about some of the most important parts of the world. There鈥檚 either little or no coverage, or the wrong types of coverage. By highlighting what people are actually thinking and talking about on their blogs, we are able to provide a counterweight to the mainstream media.

How many people are reading these posts?

We had 1.1 million in early 2006. The main page is getting hard to read because there鈥檚 so much stuff. You can subscribe to countries, regions or topics. For us, the value in this is the editors. As information explodes around the web, we need editors to feature the good stuff. For instance, we have an editor for Latin America who emails a list of the five or six best blogs of the day. If you鈥檙e an interested citizen, you probably want that email.

The internet is global, but doesn鈥檛 most of the technology come out of the west?

Most of the world approaches technology with the attitude that 鈥渋t鈥檚 made in the US, we鈥檒l use it鈥�. Bloggers in Africa use 鈥� they don鈥檛 care that it鈥檚 in California. They care that it鈥檚 free, and they use it. That鈥檚 not the case for Chinese blogs. A lot are using Chinese services like Blogbus. This is a really big deal when it comes to figuring out the censorship issue. The reason you see western companies building Chinese versions of their software is that otherwise the Chinese build Chinese versions. China is the one country where they鈥檙e producing enormous amounts of their own technology and competing with US companies.

What are the effects of increased connectedness on our society?

There鈥檚 an optimistic take that says the challenges we want to tackle today are global ones. Pandemics, global warming and poverty are all inherently cross-border. The interesting problems are international ones. At the same time, the internet frees us from the limitations of where we鈥檙e born and where we grew up. As we build networks and friendships that cross boundaries, it stretches our sense of identity. When I get off an airplane, I can find other bloggers. My social circle now includes young hackers in Cambodia, as well as media professionals in Bahrain. My life is richer for it, but it also helps me think about the problems I want to solve in a really different way. For years, the environmental movement said 鈥渢hink globally, act locally鈥�. Now we can think globally and act globally.

And the downside of global connectivity?

In the short run, we look very parochial. We tend to adjust very slowly and ignore stuff we don鈥檛 immediately understand. So few Americans have a real positive relationship with someone from the Arab world that they can lean on, for instance. As more and more of us forge connections like that, it gets harder and harder for people to make truly stupid global decisions. I can see arguments for how increasing connectedness could be a bad thing, but I just don鈥檛 buy it.