"Welcome to the United States, we have some of the slowest internet in the world."*

In class last week we talked about what Manuel Castells (for those of you not in this class, he is the author of The Rise of the Network Society, the first book in a trilogy regarding the information age. It is a very interesting, albeit dense read) refers to as “technological retardation”. He explains that this occurs when technology does not diffuse (utilized by a large portion of society) because of institutional obstacles. He gives as an example China’s technologically advanced society, which in some instances was centuries ahead of Europe as far as innovative development. For instance, their use of paper, the printing press, gun powder and the compass, all developed hundreds of years before Europe. But, around the 13th century, the government began to squelch technology development, which lead to, as we know now China’s fall from the technology leader board. (See pages 7-12 in Castells, it really is interesting reading)

So this brings me to my topic for this week, high speed internet, which in the US, is not so high speed. According to some data (I pulled this information from various internet sites, thus my inclusion of a range of values for the US. Additionally there is some discrepancy regarding the measuring of download speeds, i.e. megabits v. megabytes. The former is 1/8th the latter, so 8 megabits equals 1 megabyte. For this entry, I am going to assume everything to be in megabytes, but I have a feeling that cable/telecom companies would advertise megabits to convince us, the consumers that we are getting an incredible deal) the US ranks among the world, somewhere between 16th to 25th place for internet download speeds. In other words, there are 16 to 25 countries that have faster download speeds than we do.

I have two issues with this. First, the United States invented the internet! (This is like the US men’s basketball (also our invention) team failing to bring home the gold medal in the 2004 Olympics, it is simply wrong.) We should be leading the way as far as innovation, this includes download speeds. I understand that the US is much larger than countries like Japan, France, and Korea, all of which have faster download speeds. Still the US should be top 5, at least top 10, in this area. Secondly, how does this affect our country in the global community? Are we in a state of technological retardation because of government bureaucracy? Because of corporate greed? Will we miss opportunities because we are not in a position to handle new technologies that are yet to be developed?

Here is how the US compares with the rest of the world. Not surprisingly Japan is number 1 with an average download speed of nearly 70mbs. (Incidentally, 70mbs will cost you about $22 dollars per month in Japan) The US, as mentioned earlier is 16th to 25th with an average download speed of 2.3mbs! Does this bother anyone else? I wanted find out the fastest speed I could get at my apartment. According to Comcast (my internet provider) they highest speed they offer is 16mbs (megabits or megabytes?). It will cost me $43/month for the first 6 months, and $68/month thereafter! Wow, I probably could have qualified for a mortgage a few years ago for $68 dollars a month! So not only are we over 4x slower (in this area, 35x slower nationwide) than Japan, we pay 3x as much. Again, anyone else bothered by this?

Links
http://pressesc.com/01179677598_us_internet_slow
http://www.betanews.com/article/US_Internet_speeds_still_slow_compared_to_the_rest_of_the_world/1218831113
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/techpolicy/2007-06-25-net-speeds_N.htm

* Among post modern societies.