| Aleppo, one of the oldest towns in the world, has not escaped modernisation. A forest of parabolic antennas picks up television programmes from all over the world, relayed from space by satellites in geostationary orbit, a high orbit 36 000 km above the Earth. Television is now one of the most popular mediums in the world. It is not necessary to know how to read and write to watch a programme. This makes television very accessible. Just over 40% of 20 million Syrians have parabolic antennas, 330 000 own a mobile phone and 77 000 have internet subscriptions (mostly officials). However, the techniques used to process and transmit information (information technology, Internet, telecommunications) are consuming increasingly more electricity. In the past ten years, televisions, decoders and recorders have increased electric consumption and on average, as much energy is needed to cool down a computer as to power it. Also, according to a report by the NGO, Global action Plan, computer servers now produce as much CO2 as international air traffic. In 2008 only 5% of Africans had access to the Internet compared to 73% of North Americans. In a few decades, "information technology" (IT) has become increasingly present in human life and how societies function on a worldwide scale.
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