DevLog 6-3

Pacis Nkubito: DEVLOG 6-3

Developing Final Project Concept

This week I brainstormed ideas for my final project and started doing research on potential topics. I also explored random potential ideas from an idea generator.

1. Share initial research links in-class and below ✏️

   • Speedtest Global Index — monthly country-by-country average fixed and mobile speeds
   • ITU Broadband Statistics — UN data on global internet access and infrastructure gaps

2. Identify potential topics (2-3 sentences) ✏️ The internet is seen as a single global technology, but where you live determines how fast you can access the content on the internet. The gap between the fastest and slowest country is not only a technical problem but a political and economic one. This project puts you on a world map and makes you wait at the speed of wherever you click, rendering global internet inequality as a felt, durational experience rather than a statistic.

3. 1-2 related articles, with summaries ✏️

   • Low Internet Access Driving Inequality — IMF Blog (2020): IMF staff research showing that internet access gaps directly widen income inequality within and between countries, with a 1% increase in internet users raising per capita growth by 0.1-0.4 points in sub-Saharan Africa.

4. 3 links with summaries of inspiring / related projects ✏️

   • Submarine Cable Map (TeleGeography) — The actual live map of every undersea cable.
   • Internet Health Report (Mozilla Foundation) — Annual data report on global internet access inequality
   • Internet Connection Speed by Country — Visualization of average internet speed by country as a static map.

5. Identify new skills or technologies ✏️

   • HTML/CSS/JavaScript — for the web interface
   • Leaflet.js — for the interactive world map
   • Node.js - for data collection and processing
   • MongoDB - for storing and querying the data
   • Ookla Speedtest Global Index API or ITU open datasets — for country-level speed data
   • A simulated video load bar that runs at the mathematically correct speed for each country

6. Write a summary of your topic(s), research, and technology (3–4 sentences) ✏️ This project is a world map where every country is a simulation of how long people wait for a given video to load. You click a country, and a YouTube video begins loading at the average internet speed of wherever you picked. I want to do this project because internet speed is one of the most consequential and least discussed forms of global inequality. The communities implicated are the 2.6 billion people still unconnected, and the infrastructure investors who decide where cables go.

7. Share a random potential idea from an idea generator. ✏️ A memorial site for every social media platform that has died, with the last post ever made on each one displayed in silence.

8. Share a random potential idea from an idea generator. ✏️ A Waiting Times Visualizer showing different U.S. government departments where you select a department and see how long it takes to receive a given service.

9. Share a random potential idea from an idea generator. ✏️ A scrollable visualization of every major technology that built the internet, where you can click on each one to see a timeline of its development and impact.

10. Share (2-3 sentences) concerns you have about the final project ✏️ My main concern is the data collection, coverage, and accuracy. I’m not really sure If I could find the data about all countries and If it accurate enough. I’m also concerned that this project could get outdated pretty fast because internet infrastrucure is changing rapidly.