On Thu, Mar 10, 2005 at 10:52:43AM -0500, Steven Buehler wrote:
> Singapore Surpasses U.S. As Top Tech Nation - Forbes.com
> Singapore has displaced the United States as the top economy in
> information technology competitiveness, according to the World
> Economic Forum's latest annual Global Information Technology Report
> released today. The U.S. drops from first to fifth in the rankings,
> which measures the propensity for countries to exploit the
> opportunities offered by information and communications technology
> (ICT). Iceland, Finland and Denmark occupy positions two, three and
> four out of 104 countries surveyed, with Iceland achieving the most
> improvement among the top countries, moving up from tenth last year.
> India and China significantly improved their positions climbing to
> numbers 39 and 45, compared to 45 and 51 in 2003, respectively.
This is really a pretty nebulous claim. The criteria used would be
all-important in determining such rankings, and I don't know what the
precise criteria are. Look at Japan. Those people probably have more
cell phones per cubic person than anywhere else, and they're much more
inclined toward unique and clever uses of such devices. So? Somehow
they're better than the U.S.? I don't think so. The _basic_ innovations
still come from here. Japan is very very good at efficiency and
implementation, but the original ideas are usually from us.
I've seen a lot of "news" like this, which is mostly _designed_ to paint
the U.S. in a bad light, and written by people who don't like us. That
includes a lot of people who live right here among us. Somehow, while
living in one of the most prosperous, successful and free countries on
Earth, some people still persist in believing and forwarding the idea
that we or our economic system are bad.
Sorry, but I look askance at people who believe the U.S. is anything but
the best country on Earth.
Paul
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