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 interesting content there is on the Web, the more incentive for readers to get connected; similarly, the more people browsing, the more incentive there is for people to put public content onto the Web. In the U.S. this happens very quickly, as each morsel of information is available to anyone throughout that largely common-language, common-currency bloc that is (in oversimplification) the U.S. There is an incredible economy of scale. Europe, however, has firebreaks between its cultures: disparate languages, history, institutions, even long-nurtured antagonisms. The explosion of servers and readers exists, but it has moved more slowly. If you publish something on the Web on the local breeding grounds of the gerbil, you will attract gerbil fanciers only of your own language. |
If you start a discussion on the delights of Real Ale, the wine drinkers farther south won't contribute to your audience. Add to this the historical facts that the Internet was invented in the U.S. and that in European states telecommunications monopolies have manacled the development of communications, and it is not surprising that Europe seems to be a few years behind the U.S. Perhaps there are things that European states can do to make things happen faster. The entrepreneurial public should learn that in the Web age, if you wait for government seed funding for a project, you will probably be too late. If it is a good idea, just do it. But there are still things governments can help with. Telecommunications monopolies cannot fall too soon. For the future, governments should not rest on their laurels but should strongly fund pure research, especially in multicultural labs such as cern. For the present, the transatlantic public Internet is overloaded: access is slow to unusable. For Europe to hang together in cyberspace, it must have good international links within and to the U.S. If market forces are not paying for this, it is up to governments to step in and fix it. Once they do, usage will soar.  2 of 5
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