Tuesday, November 05, 2002
Online in the US of E On the other hand, there is genuine Internet growth that is taking place in Europe at present. More people are getting seriously online, broadband is moving to double-digit penetration and local players have finally woken up to the call. I do not think Europe is or will ever be ready to replace the US as the growth engine of the Internet, but it’s not hard to predict a more multilateral web where the USA remains the leading nation but only as primus inter pares (btw, even Asia has more user than the US).
Europe and Asia have made great progress on the medium that Al Gore invented
According to NUA, Europe has 190 million online users while the US only 182. Does this mean that the US online dominance is at an end? I don’t think so. First of all is not just a question of how many but of how much. In Europe, despite the big numbers, Internet is not yet part of the social life as it is in the US. Mobile phone usage for instance, including SMSs, is much more common in Europe than emails and surfing the web. On top of that, the Internet culture remains totally US oriented. Most of the companies making inroads in the European online markets have names like eBay or Amazon and the users themselves tend to visit US sites as often as local ones.
posted by Mooraq at 4:31 PM
Monday, November 04, 2002
Proudly Pro-Global I confess I am getting increasingly tired to hear the idiotic anti-globalisation slogans of the Seattle sort. A good op-ed on the Riformista (in Italian) points out the contradictions and the empty idealism that drive the no-global movement. It claims to stand for the third world but goes hand in hand with the French agricultural protectionists like Jose Bove who wants nothing less than blocking any foreign (especially third world) agricultural import into Europe. It pretends to speak for the poor of the world but it would like them to remain so rather than move up the industrial and development ladder since that means becoming more global. It wants peace for all (a noble aim) but doesn’t care if nasty dictators oppress and torture their people, as long as America doesn’t threat to intervene. I could go on and on and on about the misguided ideas driving the movement but you get the drift. Maybe it’s time that the people who are REALLY concerned about the future of this world of ours stand up and start talking about the benefits of globalisation and its merits. How can we allow these luddites to highjack the agenda with their prehistoric ideas on economics? One of the few, clear lessons we get from history is that going global means more prosperity, peace and freedom for all involved, while going local means more war, more dictators and more hate. But probably the No-Globals will be too busy wrecking Florence to notice.
It’s time to stand up to this no-global nonsense
The so-called No-Global movement is having a big party in Florence this coming weekend. Locals and the Italian Government are afraid that violent demonstrations may damage the beautiful but fragile Renaissance jewels in the city of Dante and Michelangelo. Let’s hope nothing like that happens.
posted by Mooraq at 5:12 PM
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