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Opinion leaders in government and business routinely tout the Internet's power as a force for economic and social development, and programs designed to bridge the digital divide are springing up across the developing world. Many questions remain, however, about the effectiveness of such programs in fostering greater productivity and improving quality of life. Overselling the Web? offers a much needed antidote to the Internet hype touting the promise of new technologies. Drawing on macroeconomic data as well as eye-opening anecdotes, Charles Kenny underscores the trade-offs and constraints inherent in the new communications technology. His work raises serious questions about the advisability of channeling scarce investment funds into the Internet when countries are confronting more basic challenges in the realm of education, health, and infrastructure

Intro -- Title Page -- Preface -- Chapter 1: Malthus's Ultimate Weapon -- Chapter 2: Civilization and the Rise of Infection -- Chapter 3: Trade Merges Disease Pools -- Chapter 4: Pestilence Conquers -- Chapter 5: The Exclusion Instinct -- Chapter 6: Cleaning Up -- Chapter 7: Salvation by Needle -- Chapter 8: It's Good to Get Closer -- Chapter 9: The Revenge of Infection? -- Chapter 10: Abusing Our Best Defenses -- Chapter 11: Flattening the Plague Cycle -- Chapter 12: Conclusion: Humanity's Greatest Victory -- Acknowledgments -- About the Author -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index -- Copyright.

Abandoning hope -- The bad news : diverging incomes -- The worse news : it's hard to raise growth rates -- The good news : the end of the Malthusian trap -- The better news : the great convergence in quality of life -- The great news : the best things in life are cheap -- Drivers of the better life : innovation and ideas -- Policies for the quality of life -- The global agenda -- Realistic optimism

The inscription on Karl Marx's tombstone in London's Highgate Cemetery reads, 'Workers of all lands, unite.' Of course, it hasn't quite ended up that way. As much buzz as the global Occupy movement managed to produce in a few short months, the silence is deafening now. Marx saw an apocalyptic logic to the class struggle. The battle of the vast mass against a small plutocracy had an inevitable conclusion: Workers 1. Rich Guys 0. Marx argued that the revolutionary proletarian impulse was also a fundamentally global one -- that working classes would be united across countries and oceans by their shared experience of crushing poverty and the soullessness of factory life. Globalization may have been the watchword of the 1990s, but it's still a work in progress. As interconnected global markets get ever more interconnected, average incomes are converging. Adapted from the source document.

When Americans think about private education, what likely comes to mind are posh-sounding names like Milton or Collegiate, where the elites of Boston and Manhattan -- for the low, low price of $40,000 a year -- send their offspring to give them a small leg up in the race to Harvard or Yale. For many countries in Africa, Latin America, and Asia, one of the most dramatic changes over the past couple of generations has been the number of children who go to school. Take the West African country of Guinea-Bissau, where practically all of the country's primary-school-age kids had entered the formal education system in 2010 and nearly two-thirds were completing the full six years of primary school. The pressure on developing-country education systems to deliver learning results is growing. They are shamed by published test results from international organizations like the OECD and by local civil society groups like Uwezo in East Africa and Pratham in India. Adapted from the source document.

The international community has hailed impressive strides toward the United Nations' Millennium Development Goals, but Africa lags because of a late start, despite its more recent successes. Will the next set of goals avoid arbitrary and unrealistic targets?

For all the talk of the global "clash of civilizations" -- the theory of inevitable conflict between cultures and religions, coined by a founder of this magazine, Samuel P. Huntington -- the interesting thing about the decade after the September 11 attacks, when so many prognosticators and pundits championed this argument, is just how wrong they got it. The view that Islam in particular is on a collision course with the West thanks to a yawning cultural divide got a second look when the Arab Spring didn't instantly lead to deals for Cairo Disney and Hooters Tunis. But, if anything, shared values are converging across countries and time zones and, yes, across cultures and religions. Granted, not all this convergence is universal. In fact, there's plenty of global convergence that Americans might not feel so comfortable about. Adapted from the source document.

Americans spent much of this summer arguing over immigration reform, and South Africans spent much of it contemplating Nelson Mandela's legacy. But the link between the two went unnoticed: One of Mandela's biggest legacies was to show that immigration reform can benefit everyone, in real economic terms. One of the earliest acts of South Africa's first post-apartheid government was to break down borders within the country that had prevented members of the black African majority from choosing where they worked and lived. South Africa demonstrates that the practical benefits of open borders -- when compared with the selfish interests of those on the "right" side of the line -- outweigh the concerns. So perhaps it's time to think big and loosen that most peculiar and outdated institution: the right to work only where you're born. Adapted from the source document.

Although North America and Europe have finally emerged from the darkness of the global financial crisis, and although the stratospheric growth rates of Brazil, China, and India have come down to Earth, the economies of the West still lag behind those in the rest of the world. That's particularly the case when it comes to jobs. The unemployment rate in the US, for example, remains stubbornly around 7%. So here's a novel solution to America's problem: Move the people to where the jobs are. According to the State Department, only about 6.3 million US citizens live abroad, or around 2% of the domestic population. In relative terms, that's pathetic. About 5.5 million British people live permanently abroad, almost five times the US level in per capita terms. The benefits of US emigration extend way beyond ready jobs and a more interesting life for those in search of adventures abroad. Research by economists Gabriel Felbermayr and Benjamin Jung suggest that as little as a 1% increase in migration between two countries raises bilateral trade. Adapted from the source document.

For those who've spent hours in line at the department of motor vehicles or forked over a couple hundred bucks to get a passport, it may be difficult to appreciate the joys of government-issued identification. Even worse is the very real fear that nefarious government agencies will use this information to track and monitor citizens. Yet nearly all still carry IDs. For all the justifiable concerns, the bottom line is that the rapid global spread today of more robust in systems -- powered by new technologies that use high-tech personal features from fingerprints to brain waves -- is great news. Much of this new spate of innovation is taking place in the developing world, where the most people stand to benefit. There are still dangers in this move toward better identification. Civil libertarians complain that it increases opportunities for governments to abuse citizens, regardless of what limits are meant to be in place. Adapted from the source document.