US No Longer Technology King

An anonymous reader writes to tell us that according to a recent report from the World Economic Forum the US has lost the leading spot for technology innovation. The new reigning champ is now apparently Denmark with other Nordic neighbors Sweden, Finland and Norway all claiming top spots as well. "Countries were judged on technological advancements in general business, the infrastructure available and the extent to which government policy creates a framework necessary for economic development and increased competitiveness."

Comments

Telecomm

[dedazo]

It appears it's mostly based on that... but then we all know this country sucks there in regards to Europe and Asia. As soon as the FCC stops sucking up to the big telecom corps and opens up the spectrum, the game is on again.

Re:Telecomm

[dgatwood]

What's interesting is not the mean, but rather the standard deviation. The U.S. has a large concentration along the coast, but a third of the population is rural. That's very unusual. Most countries with low population density tend to have very high density along the coast and almost nobody anywhere else. Sweden, for example, has 84% of its population spread over only 1.4% of its land area. The U.S. has 80% of its people in urban areas, so a lower percentage, and spread across a whopping 3%. Thus, assuming the definitions of urban vs. rural are similar between those two statistics (I'm not certain), the urban areas are only about half as dense, and the rural areas are roughly 25% more populous.

Re:Telecomm

[unapersson]

"For some reason, people have gotten the idea in their head that there's some kind of huge Christian uprising or takeover happening in the US, and it's simply not there at all. Sorry. Given that you don't bother to support your initial point, I'm going to just ignore the rest of the post. Hope you don't mind."

Well if that shrinking minority of Christians just happens to be running the country, driving policy (banning gay marriage?) then people may well get that impression. Maybe less a growth in numbers and more a growth in power and influence. I suspect as the number of practising Christians continues to drop that desire to grab power and influence will only increase as an attempt to stop the slide.

Re:Telecomm

[vux984]

That isn't insightful. Its an irrelevant statistic. Average population density as it correlates to broadband availability is meaningless if there is enough empty land to skew the statistics.

Canada, for example, has a population density of 3.2 on that chart. Yet it too has excellent broadband penetration (markedly superior to the united states) because despite having an average of 3.2 people per square kilometer, the vast majority of people live in dense cities along the southern border, while vast amounts of geography range from virtually to completely uninhabited.

Several of the nordic countries are similarly laid out. With dense urban populations, and large virtually unpopulated areas where its mountainous, glacial, or arctic tundra.

The GP's post which indicated that these countries had a higher population density than the US is of course patently false, however, he had the right idea. Broadband becomes viable as the population density reaches a threshold in the regions where the population density reaches that threshold. In a these Nordic countries (and Canada), nearly the entire population lives in regions where the population is "dense enough". While in regions where the population isn't that dense, there often isn't any population at all.

Thus despite Canada's excellent broadband availability to like 95% of its people, if you threw a dart at a map of canada, you'd more than likely hit a spot where there there wasn't access. Indeed, this is because you'd more than likely hit a spot where there wasn't any PEOPLE.

In the US, however, there are huge numbers of people living in regions that simply aren't that dense. You throw a dart at a map of the US and odds are there will be people living under it, but probably not enough of them to make broadband viable.

In other words, population density simply indicates the total number of people divided by the total amount of space, and says nothing about where they actually live. If you took everyone in the states and relocated them all to Texas the US would have the exact same population density it has now, but getting everybody broadband access would be comparatively trivial.

cheers,

Re:Telecomm

[LynnwoodRooster]

And so many people forget just how BIG the US is. You can fly for 6 hours and still be over the same country. Most people in Europe really don't understand the scale of the US...

Having been the Europe many times, I've often been asked by friends and colleagues why we in the US don't have high speed trains everywhere. Well, considering that - if we used the fastest TVGs and ICEs they have in the EU - it would still take about 7 hours to take a train from Seattle (where I live) to San Francisco - the nearest big city (assuming 300 KPH and slowing down for the occasional towns/crossings). Or 30 hours from Seattle to Miami, at the same average speed.

Compare that to under 2 hours for Paris to Brussels. It's just a different scale over here. And that makes telecom also difficult. Distances between big population centers would cover multiple EU countries. It takes a lot of time and a lot of money to pull more fiber from Seattle to Chicago, or Houston to Los Angeles... It's not a small 150-100 kilometer run of fiber; it's literally hundreds - if not thousands - of kilometers to cover.

Re:Telecomm

[paeanblack]

Population density doesn't matter. The Gini coefficient of the population distribution does.

Consider US vs Canada http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/images/content /94116main_usa_nightm.jpg

Canada has a much lower population density, but it's far cheaper to lay fiber to 95% of the Canadian population than to 95% of the American population, because the average distance between two random Canadians is far less the average distance between two Americans.

Countries like the US/Britain/France/Germany, which are more evenly populated will simply require much more fiber/area for a given broadband penetration than countries like Canada/Australia/Brazil, which have huge clumps of people and vast areas of sparse population.

Re:Telecomm

[Atmchicago]

I was a little surprised about your 7 hour time quote from Seattle to San Francisco, so I did some fact checking:

Google maps says that the distance between the two cities is 808 miles, or 12 hours 40 mins by car. Google converts those 808 miles into kilometers: 808 miles = 1 300.34995 kilometers.

The time it takes to travel 1300 kilometers at 300km/hour: 4.33 hours. So you were off by a substantial amount of time - 2 hours and 20 minutes or so.

High speed trains will become more popular when gas prices go up. That will affect both car travel and airplane travel. Gas prices are already high in Europe for car travel, and trains are a lot more comfortable that planes, so that's probably why they are more popular there. Particularly when you take into account all the security checkpoints they force you through at airports these days, it's a royal pain to fly.

Re:Telecomm

[Curunir_wolf]

I'm always hearing this "but the population is too sparse" excuse about why the US is falling behind so badly in broadband deployment. Well, that's all it is - an excuse. And it tells a lot about how the US has changed in the last 100 years.

You didn't hear these kind of excuses when the telegraph was the big communications network - it went to every town. And you didn't hear it when rail travel became prevalent - those tracks went everywhere, and if a mountain needed blasting to make way, the mountain got blasted. You can claim the Chinese worked like slaves to lay track - which may be true, but there is no shortage of cheap foreign labor in the US today - and they could be laying fiber (in fact, a lot of them are - just not enough).

The problem, as usual, is the self-serving traitorous bastards running Washington (the White House *and* congress - especially congress). When WW I started up, the US needed planes. Did they let the Wright Brothers push them around because they had some patent? No. They were like "look, guys, we need planes for the war, and you can't make them fast enough, so were throwing out your patent."

What happens now when we need equipment for the war? The multinational corporation making hummers whines "but we've got a contract - we make hummers and that's what we're gonna make." So what happens? We buy hummers that get our soldiers killed instead of the anti-road-bomb armored equipment we really need. (check this out). What's that about? Some greedy frackin senators with their palms greased, that's what!

No more excuses. Build the infrastructure we need, make the equipment we need, and quick dicking around with the greedy corporations.

I for one...

[rez_rat]

I for one... aaaaahhhhh, nevermind.

What else do you expect?

[Marxist Hacker 42]

When a society decides that corporations are priviledged citizens, corporations decide that profit and Tax Evasion matter more than Education, how can the country NOT fall behind in technology?

Re:What else do you expect?

[Marxist Hacker 42]

So let me get this straight. You're blaming failed State controlled education on corporations? Hmm, makes sense to me.

Actually, I'm blaming failing state controled services IN ALL ARENAS on corporations not paying for the services they use. Education of workers should be a primary value of any long range thinking company that needs skilled workers- yet for the past 20 years we've had a tax revolt removing money from the schools and making sure corporations pay a significantly lower percentage than they did in the 1950s. Education is just the most visible. Crime is second. But as a state worker working for Oregon Department of Transportation- I have to say roads and shipping are not far behind.

Re:well...

[Dan Slotman]

Actually, according to the article, "A deterioration of the political and regulatory environment in the US prompted the fall." However, "Despite losing its top position, the US still maintained a strong focus on innovation, driven by one of the world's best tertiary education systems and its high degree of co-operation with industry."

Don't mod me informative; it is just copy-and-paste magic for people as lazy as the parent poster.

Priorities

[HomelessInLaJolla]

A deterioration of the political and regulatory environment in the US prompted the fall Our leaders aren't allowing American scientists to innovate. If it doesn't fit into a corporate ledger, or if the return on a research investment can't be forecast in terms of dollars, then the venture capitalists have little or no interest in it. Scientists, increasingly, are finding themselves denied staffing and funding requests because they're not salesmen. Especially over the last ten years I've seen a trend where MBAs, accountants, marketers, and salesmen are bidding for the highest salaries while the scientists and innovators are seen almost as a necessary evil for doing business.

Until the US fixes its priorities we're going to continue to fall. Perhaps the US can keep buying talent from other nations, with H1-B visas, but unless the scientists are given fruitful environments they simply aren't going to come up with anything new or revolutionary. What encouragement do the nation's thinkers have to keep improving their ideas when the laurels and rewards are going only to the people who manage them like a column of assets? It's plain demoralizing to continually refine a product for a year only to see executive support lost and funding slashed. Graduate students and post-docs, while they provide a significant source of intellectual labor, cannot compete with happy and eager experienced scientists in other parts of the world.

Extreme levels of government regulation, oversight, interaction, and micromanaging are probably a significant contributor to the death of American technological innovation as well.

Re:Well, that's not really unexpected

[ez76]

Sometimes people forget that there is no way to be prosper doing each others laundry

It all comes down to quality, and at Fjord, quality is job 1.

Education, immigration?

[nermaljcat]

Like software, Education and Immigration should be free and open. Providing innovation a fertile breeding ground.

I think that the cost of Education in the US has a big impact on this too. Sadly, a college degree has become a status symbol in the US for "upper class" citizens. A lot of people can't afford a student loan that is sometimes more than their mortgage!

A lot of European countries offer good incentives for people to study, including paying a state allowance for university students.

I'm not up to date on European immigration policy, but I'm sure it would be much more relaxed than the US when it comes to skilled labor. I couldn't imagine it being any more tighter.

Well, that's my 2 cents worth anyways...

Re:I have to ask...

[Catbeller]

'What country has landed on the moon?'
38 years ago.

'What country invented the transistor, and later the microchip?'
Over 50 years ago.

'What country harnessed electricity, and set up the first electric lights?'
You'd be surprised. But that was over 120 years ago.

'What country set up the first assembly line, and mass produced the automobile?'
Again, 100 years ago.

'What country split the atom?'
63 years ago.

Now.
Which of the wealthy industrialized countries has the highest percentage of poor?
Which has least progressive taxation, ie rich pay higher percentage, indeed, pay taxes at all.
Which has lowest average wages.
Which has declining participation in the wealth generated by labor.
Which has worst ratio superrich to general population.
Which has giant trade imbalance.
Which has largest debt.
Which has biggest tax breaks for wealthiest people.
Which has collapsing real estate market.
Which has no manufacturing capacity for its own markets.
Which has worst schools.
Which has largest percentage of permanent poor.
Which has poorest representation of science in government.
Which has most money wasted on military and spy networks.
Which has religious belief that markets cure anything.
Which lost a major city and told its people to go to hell for being poor and stupid.
Which has the highest per capita spending on health care with the worst per capita coverage. Add: Which has businesses taking 30 percent or more of the health care expenditures as admin costs and profit.
Which has worst sex education, teen pregnancy rate and STD infection rate.
Which has worst newborn death rate.
Which has collapsing science funding.
Which has had science infiltrated by the operatives of a political party.
Which has a population so uneducated and unimaginative that they only finished 1/4 of a space station and forgot to build a shuttle to get to it. And can't understand why that would matter.
Which economy is about to explode, sinking belly up?
Which nation is exceedingly wealthy and well educated because they nationalized their oil fields, keeping all the profits? That would be Norway.
Which countries tax high, have excellent labor representation in business decisions, has excellent health care at reasonable cost, low poverty rates, lowest teen birth rates and STD infection rates, and now lead the world in tech development? Why, the Netherlands, Sweden, Norway and all the other countries mentioned.

Apparently the people of a nation taking control of their futures through their representative governments do better than those who abdicate their control to be ruled by corporate business. Who would have thought it.

Where do you live, btellier?

[Mariner28]

If you're from New York, I can understand how you can somehow ignore the rise of the Christian Right in American politics ever since the Reagan era. You need to get out and see the "Heartland" of the country. Try Dallas, or Oklahoma City, or Baton Rouge, or Jackson. How about that Crystal Cathedral in California?

We now have a President who is "Born Again", and recognizes Christ as his personal saviour. His old Attorney General, John Ashcroft, a devout Assemblies of God member, used to anoint himself with oil. We have many members of Congress, both in the Senate and the House, who are ordained ministers in their churches. Some are LDS Bishops. I would venture to say that the percentage of devout Christians holding office in various levels of government in the US exceeds that of the general population. Which oath do they hold to? Their duty to country, or to a church?

You've got people who firmly believe that the US Constitution states that the USA is a Christian nation. I've got in-laws who used to believe that I was damned to Hell because I was raised Catholic and not a member of the Church of Christ.

We have a member of the Texas House who firmly believes that the Earth is the center of the Universe, and that we never landed a man on the moon, and that satellites are held in orbit by magnetism, not gravity - because Newton's Laws are wrong and he can prove it. http://www.fixedearth.com/geosynchronous_sa.htm (I had to post that link because it's a hoot. His proof is that a LaGrange point is where gravity stops because it's where it balances out. Give the man a Nobel!)

We had an Army General (2 star?) who fervently believed we would win in Iraq because his God is greater than their God, Allah. Someone forgot to tell him they're one and the same. Jehovah, too.

These are the people who've been running this nation for the last dozen years or so. Their's are the people who backed a "Crusade" in the Middle East, thinking we'd set them "free".

Oh. And that CUNY study? Does it take into account that many black Southern Baptists are becoming Muslims? And the biggest immigrant groups in the US today are Hispanic Catholics (and Protestants) and Muslims from the Middle East and SE Asia?

Just because the percentage of people identifying themselves as Christians has gone down (how accurate is that study) does not mean that the number of people who identify themselves as religious has gone down. Or that the percentage who identify themselves as Born Again has gone down.

I don't need to cite references. All you need to do is get out of your ivory tower (sorry, that actually sounds religious!) and look around. Wake up. You're missing an entire country out there!