In 2010, Hillary Clinton described social media as a new nervous
system for our planet (1). So can the pulse of the planet be
captured with social media? There are many who are skeptical not
least because of the digital divide. “You mean the pulse of the
Data Have’s? The pulse of the affluent?” These rhetorical
questions are perfectly justified, which is why social media
alone should not be the sole source of information that feeds
into decision-making for policy purposes. But millions are
joining the social media ecosystem everyday. So the selection
bias is not increasing but decreasing. We may not be able to
capture the pulse of the planet comprehensively and at a very
high resolution yet, but the pulse of the majority world is
certainly growing louder by the day. This map of the world at
night (based on 2011 data) reveals areas powered by electricity.
Yes, Africa has far less electricity consumption. This is not
misleading, it is an accurate proxy for industrial development
(amongst other indexes). Does th