By Peter Cochrane, 13 June 2005 09:30
COMMENT What a lot of interesting replies and reactions to my recent post on the IT 'SS'. I'd say half get it and the other half need to book a flight to the US to give it a try.
While they are there they should take a look at the road system and the airports too. We have a choice, we really do - to build an inclusive or exclusive society. The EU is about exclusion, stopping people doing things by price, poor facilities or control freak mentalities. The US is about inclusion, making things available so that people may participate and succeed.
Unless you have been here and tried it you probably won't get it - and hey, you don't have to. If you don't know what you are missing, what's the problem?
Ask yourself the question: why is the productivity per capita in the US two times that of the EU? Might it be to do with infrastructure - road, rail, air transport and communication networks and connectivity? I reckon the UK is losing around 20 per cent per annum because people cannot get where they want to go or communicate. But perhaps this is a topic for another blog...
The cost of providing Wi-Fi access is less than $1 per day so why charge and why try to protect it? The really smart folks can break in at will, and if they were really intent on doing serious harm they would have done so by now.
It doesn't take a lot of imagination to really secure the important stuff. But I suppose it will be like everything else in the EU - we will have to wait for the control freaks to die before we see them replaced by those who really get IT.
And at risk of belabouring the point... I have just been joined by two American refugees from a local Washington DC hotel who are totally outraged at being asked for $9.00 to connect to the internet at 6Mbps from their room. And I can understand it! The towels, soap and shampoo cost $6.50 and they don't charge for them, so why include internet access on the bill when it cost less than $1?
Comments
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1. James Brown
Hi,
I must admit, I completely agree with your comments re: wi-fi access in the UK. But I recently took a trip to Amsterdam on business and found it completely different over there. There were many cafes with free, high quality wireless, and my hotel was wireless enabled (although for a price).
I think the UK has a long way to catch up to the US, but it would be nice if it even caught up to The Netherlands! :-)
Cheers,
James.
2. Jeremy Perkins
Having lived in New York for 6 years and having spent alot of time in Europe, I can only assume Peter and I have been going to different America/Europe.
You are quite right that the UK's infrastructure is a complete disgrace, indeed the only place I have seen worse infrastructure outside Africa is New York - there the roads are so bad that cars regularly lose their wheels on hitting a pothole, that is in the rare moments when the gridlock eases and they can get above 5mph. I ought perhaps to admit that I lived there 10 years ago so speak with less authority about today's conditions (other than to observe that the US' pre-eminent position has not suddenly materialised in 10 years), and will happily admit that the wheels did always seem to come off American cars rather than Japanese or German cars.
And lest you think I refer only to the roads, a friend of mine who moved to uptown Manhattan in 1989 was not able to get a private telephone line and had to make do with a "party line" shared with a complete stranger living in the neighbouring flat.
By contrast Europe's infrastructure outside of the UK is exemplary. Indeed if our infrastructure were as good as Europe's then doing business (and living) in the UK would be considerably easier and more pleasurable.
3. Dick Winchester
I'd just like to say that anyone visiting the rural NE of Bonny Scotland where I have my office is welcome to sit in the garden and log onto our three or four year old wireless network and use our 2Mb ADSL connection.
4. Ian Walsh
Well, that's a new one: the EU is now also responsible for the UK's appalling transport system! Maybe Peter should get out (of aeroplanes and business hotels) a bit more. Try the Paris Metro, the German InterCity Express trains, the cheap and reliable Berlin public transport system and the road system almost anywhere on the continent for starters.
5. Richard
Yes, why isn't Britain's compact geography more of an asset?
And, why is the government so intent on restricting our activities and travel?
6. Christopher Slater-Walker
Oh, and why is it that the USA has such a problem with obesity? Could it have something to do with the fact that it's so easy (too easy?) to use the car to get absolutely anywhere?
It's also becoming clear that, from an environmental point of view, we can't sustain the boom in air transport, which is naturally very popular in the USA, as it is becoming in Europe with the availability of cheap fares.
There is a human angle to all the "advantages" which US economic success brings. As for myself, I've never really understood how we can carry on producing more and more and consuming more and more, thereby ensuring continued economic growth, and still exepct to have an ever-increasing range of products available for ever.
7. Pete King
The world is like the proverbial 'curates egg', and having travelled a fair bit of it, there are things about the USA I hate, and some things I like, and the diversity of any infrastraucture (or lack of it) in the USA is as bad and good as the worst and best of anything we have.
I agree with comments that UK is the backwater of Europe (mind you the French suffer even more of the curates egg syndrome once you get outside of Paris etc, but it is improving), the most impressive places are Vienna, Stockholm, Olso, Frankfurt in terms of towns that are trying to improve peoples lives by offering good public transport, and capitalist offering Wireless (as a way of generating revenue through use of other services).
My view is the the UK is just laissez faire about doing things, and having had a burst of 'focus' in the victorian times, has kind of thought - well what else do we need to do now - and then sits back on it's haunches.
And to be honest I like that in our culture, it makes us British (for want of a a number of regional terms), and it's what makes the french who they are (maybe we have too many Norman genes lurking around still), and having travelled the world and knowing what is not so good about the UK, it still appeals to me that it sort of works.
The only thing is that holding back access to any communication system (be it roads, or wifi) allows the masters of the political landscape (not just politicians) to control the way this country is used, and that is the problem if we want to achieve eqaulity.
And if anyone t hinks that USA is equal, then get out to the quiter corners of Arkansas, and wonder when they are going to ISDN let alone DSL
8. Roly Gross
I do enjoy Peter's blogs but always find his conclusions blinkered (probably caused by a lifetime trying to persuade everyone that technology is a panacea).
For example, infrastructure may help with American productivity but having worked for three US software companies I can tell you where their productivity comes from...immigrants, lots of them and working hideous hours (my girlfriend was one, a developer in NY and much, much prefers life in the UK - dodgy infrastructure included).
Also as the post mentioned before, the US model is close to its use by date with resources and pollution about to bring it to a shuddering halt. At least the control freaks in the EU have spotted that one coming!!
9. Paul
Roly Gross wrote:
>I can tell you where their productivity comes from...immigrants,
> lots of them and working hideous hours
at a former employer, I worked alongside US developers in the US office. It was pretty much like working in the UK, there were no amazing feats of productivity, no 18 hour days.
The customer, also in San Francisco, had quite a developers from India, and they were prepared to work long hours.
Take a look round the UK and see for yourself. Immigrants have, and well done to them, taken many of the jobs the native british despised, but then bootstrap themselves and their families into higher skills and better jobs. They know education is a privilege, a valuable gift, not something to be endured till old enough to quit and earn just enough to pay the credit card bills' interest and buy booze and fags!
We lazy europeans and us workers just have to hope everyone else becomes as fat and lazy as us, before we're all out of work!