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Peter Cochrane's Hard Drive 1999 It's tea time.com back later LAUGH? I had tears rolling down my cheeks. It started off as a serious quest but rapidly became a comedy. It was a Saturday evening around nine o'clock and all I wanted was some information from a government agency. Using a search engine I rapidly found the right public database, and the front page seemed to offer all I wanted. But when I tried to enter the following message appeared: "This site is provided as a public service and is available Monday to Friday between 09.00 and 17.00. This computer will be back online Monday next at 09.00'. Yes, a computer that keeps regular office hours! Well, it would have been even funnier had I had not been so desperate for the material. The following week I found several people who had shared similar experiences with government sites across the planet, and particularly in Europe. This was further compounded when I received an email from a colleague in the European Commission, direct from his own, private email address. It had the following header: "Today is a Commission holiday and none of the file servers are operating - so this message is sent from my private email address." What an interesting business model: computers and services that take holidays and keep office hours. Perhaps this principle should be extended to the telephone and fax networks, water, electricity and transport . . . Can you imagine the result? It is amazing that anyone just observing our technological society could come up with such crazy notions, let alone that those involved in creating the political and economic framework in which we all live could condone such action. Where have they been? What are they doing? Perhaps they need some competition . . . Not so long ago it would have been unthinkable for most people to be able to register, open and operate a company in a country other than their own. With the Net, it is now easy to register a company in South America, have the electronic host in the US and staff in Britain, and to divert all proceeds into Switzerland. If it is legal and makes operational and financial sense, why not? America has about five per cent of the world's population and generates 20 per cent of the total gross domestic product on the old measure of goods and services delivered. And as best I can estimate, this rises to over 22 per cent when the grey economy of the bit business (Internet trade) is allowed for. But taking this bit economy alone, America already has a big lead, with over 70 per cent of the world total. At the same time Europe, with it's vastly greater population, is also reckoned to generate only 20 per cent of the world GDP, and is responsible for less than 10 per cent of the global Internet revenues. Could there be a correlation with governmental approach? On the one extreme, we have the American free-for-all with hands-off government, freedom of access to almost everything, supported by business and social systems that encourage the new and reward success. On the other, we have Europe with it's strict control of information and access, computers operating office hours, and government employees forced into a limited work schedule by the denial of access and services. If I could get access to all the figures, I could guarantee a strong correlation between national productivity and government attitude and action. Peter Cochrane holds the Collier Chair for the Public Understanding of Science & Technology at the University of Bristol. His home page is: |
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