Nice post. Here is something else for the Finns to consider.
It's Not Just IKEA and ABBA:
Sweden's No 1 in Info Tech
Investors Business Daily 2 Mar 2001
Which country boasts the world's No. 1 information economy?
The question sounds like a no-brainer.
Most Americans would say they win hands down. With its glowing banks of network servers and millions of Web surfers, the U.S. must lead the world. Right?
Wrong. For the second year in a row, a small, chilly nation to the north - Sweden - beat all others in a global ranking. Swedes were considered tops in both accessing and absorbing information technology.
The U.S., meanwhile -which placed second last year -fell to fourth place. It trailed No.2 Norway and No.3 Finland, according to the report from International Data Corp and the World Times Inc.
Analysts familiar with Scandinavian prowess in IT weren't surprised by the rankings.
"Sweden has the makings of a self sufficient 21st century information industry," said Robert Steele, a former U.S. Marine Corps information warfare specialist and chief executive of OSS.net, an Oakton, Va. based business intelligence firm.
The rankings were based on ratings of a country's tech infrastructure. Countries were judged in computer information, Internet and social categories.
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Plenty of statistics show why the U.S; trail Sweden, Norway and Finland.
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Other northern European nations like Finland have more than their share of computer talent. Linus Torvalds was a 21-year-old college student in Helsinki, Finland, when he developed the Linux operating system.
Many Scandinavian nations invest heavily in advanced computers to do economic planning, Sweden and Norway, for example, depend on Middle East oil for energy, so they use banks of mainframes to analyze the economic impact of an interruption the oil supply.
The U .S. information infrastructure ranked ninth in the survey, while its social infrastructure ranked 17th. Taiwan, the Netherlands and Denmark led in the information-infrastructure category, while Norway, Hong Kong and Japan had the strongest social infrastructures.
As expected, the U.S. had the most advanced computer infrastructure, followed by Singapore and Australia in second and third place.
But as general access to the Internet becomes a key way to measure a nation's IT competitiveness, the U.S. may lose more ground to other nations, analysts say.
Wireless devices are upstaging PCs as popular ways to access the Internet. Smaller nations, which aren't so heavily invested in PCs, may be able to quicker to embrace such devices.
Britain, for example, improved its standing in the survey from 12th to 6ththis year. The rise was mainly due to its rapid adoption of cell phones.
South Korea and Malaysia also improved their standings this way. "Wireless hasn't been used as widely in the U.S. as it has in Europe and some Asian nations," Bruno said. |
