The epicentre of the Web is somewhere, actually probably everywhere, in the USA. That this is the case stands to reason since the Internet more or less started there.
Last year I joked about how much it irked me that country drop down lists on web based forms always start with the United States first, then all the other countries of the world in alphabetical order after, but although it was just me voicing a trivial pet peeve, there is a deeper aspect to that particular manifestation of U.S. Web centricity.
Before I continue, this passing thought is absolutely not about, influenced by or serving to promote any form of patriotism or intolerance. In fact, I have no time for intolerance much as I have no particular leanings on the issue of ambivalence either. I digress.
What our beloved American friends have going for them that we, the rest of the world do not, is a large population serviced well by low cost national transportation and communications systems, where the currency is the same throughout, the language is the same, the foodstuffs, accounting and business practices are the same, timezones are more or less manageable, consumer brands and media networks are the same etc. etc. In other words, an ideal environment in which to break new products, ideas, concepts into a large, nurturing and receptive market. Unlike Europe, for example.
Europe is certainly improving with its medium-term federal agenda; most of Europe now has just the one currency, low cost air travel has recently become established and a tunnel even exists between the continent and dear old Blighty. Brands are reasonably harmonised but not to the extent of US brands and the economies are strong(ish). All seemingly fertile ground for nurturing the kind of creative, inspiring tech leadership we see in abundance in the land of the free. All, that is, apart from language.
The language barrier outside of the US seems to me, at least, to be one of the major reasons why we'll probably never see a Danish challenger to Microsoft's global domination, a Spanish company that gives Apple a run for its money or an Italian Oracle beater - Okay, so SAP is German. It's a major ball & chain.
That is not to say that I think, or would want for, that someone should step up to to knock the USA off it's perch of tech supremacy, I just happen to think that it would be fantastic if the rest of the world was able to complement or supplement the US tech leadership role rather than always having to follow it or to make do with it being the only show in town.
There are unquestionably pockets of brilliance all over Europe and in other regions of the world. However, it appears that those pockets or nodes are largely disconnected from each other beyond the country and language borders. And so we have a fragmented collection of dis-harmonious and distinctly domestic communities in each individual European state. All mostly incompatible with each other and certainly not harmonised with each other in the way that their equivalent communities are in the USA.
The solution? Simple. Let's all move to the USA, actually I'm waiting for France to come up on Rumsfeld's hit-list to be invaded on grounds that they posess cheeses of mass destruction and then they'll all have to speak English. Yeah, that's a great plan, hegemony in the USA! France could be just one big theme park. I'm tired, I'll shut up now.
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