St. Petersburg Web Design Blog

A report by the World Economic Forum says America has lost its position as the primary engine of technology innovator of the entire world.

Denmark is the new number 1 and the US is now #7! That’s a big fall. And I know how to get us back on top (but you’ll have to read on . . .)

A deterioration of the political and regulatory environment in the US prompted the fall, the Global Information Technology Report said. The Report uses the Networked Readiness Index (NRI) to measure the degree of preparation of a nation or community to participate in and benefit from ICT developments. The NRI is composed of three component indexes which assess:

• environment for ICT offered by a country or community
• readiness of the community’s key stakeholders (individuals, business and governments)
• usage of ICT among these stakeholders.

Basically their report measures two things:

• How likely a country is to produce new technologies
• How much technology they work with currently

Some of the more important things they measure when making their assessments include:

• The level of focus on education (and technology education) by the countries government
• The market’s friendliness towards new businesses, small businesses and independent business-people.
• How conducive the regulatory environment is toward developing new business and technologies.

The reason quoted for the US’s dramatic slide (for the first time ever), in the ranking was the increased unfriendliness toward new and small businesses in the regulatory environment.

All is not lost according to the report’s Co-Editor, Irene Mia. The US still ranks number 1 in many areas, including number of patents (that’s a good thing?) and tertiary education.

Latin America wins the unofficial “Most Improved” because they are seeing the results of technology favorable policies set by governments in the region over the last several years. They evidently still have a long way to go before they catch up with America, Asia and Europe.

African countries still ranked the lowest but got praise for lots of improvement. I suppose it’s hard to develop new technologies when you can’t feed your people or stop tribal wars.

Now I said I know how to fix this problem and make America #1 again didn’t I? Well here’s some ideas:

• Make me King of America! – just kidding, we don’t have King’s (do we George?), here in America.
• Reverse the “Anti Net-Neutrality” laws. These laws, are very very scary for the US and it’s people when you look at the consequences of their full implementation.
• Start w/ education. My son is a great example. An exceptional student with a very high IQ and a technology inclined aptitude. He had a full ride scholarship to any Florida University before he even made it out of Junior High, Duke University is trying to recruit him, etc etc. He’s enrolled in the finest, most advanced classes the Sarasota County School system has to offer. A sophomore, he’s already finished all the educational requirements for graduation of High School, but to keep him enrolled they are giving him (and others like him) college course with transferable credits. Sounds great whuh? They offer no computer courses! Well that’s not true, there was that one mini-course on how to make a PowerPoint presentation. This is an obvious place to start. The average high school student should at least know HTML before he graduates and the ones that want to learn Information Technology should be given the chance too.
• More regulation of large corporations. That’s right I’m a business owner calling for more regulation of businesses! Lack of control over businesses has led to many, many bad things in the past. Cocaine in Coca-Cola and slavery are extreme (but accurate), examples of how regulated business helps America’s citizens. Large Corporations have allowed to run amok for far too long. They are absolutley crushing or goobling up any and all competition from small business and individuals.
• Patent reform! Patent law is getting so out of hand here in America that it’s surreal. I bet I could go and patent the concept of a “road” and then charge as much as I want to anyone who uses any road in the U.S. It may be an extreme example, but it’s currently happening in the corporate-tech community now. Verizon recently shut down Vonage saying they’ve patented “the packet.” They didn’t make the patent, they didn’t improve the packet, they weren’t the first to use the packet, yet somehow they were granted a patent on the packet. I quess because they were the first to try. This one case threatens the existence of the Internet itself in the U.S.

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