Which reminds me, the NY Times' Thomas L. Friedman actually had an interesting column yesterday (this is my opportunity to practice the new sincerity!) on how Web-intensive Australia is:
Honey, I Shrunk the World
By Thomas L. Friedman
Melbourne, Australia -- There is a club here in Melbourne, the Kelvin Club, where they have a rule that really appeals to me: If you are at the bar and your cell phone goes off, you have to buy everyone in the bar a drink.
The reason they need such a rule here is that Australia has become one of the most wired countries in the world, with both the Internet and cell phones. America is first in PC's per capita; Australia is second. America is fourth in Internet usage; Australia is sixth (Iceland is first!). The Premier of the Australian state of Victoria, Jeff Kennett, campaigned so heavily on the Internet that he is now best known to voters by his domain name, Jeff.com.
The Internet has been adopted here with such zeal for a simple reason: Australia is a million miles from everywhere, and sparsely populated across a vast continent. The Internet can shrink that distance between Australia and the world, and between Aussies and Aussies, for almost no cost.
"For years we have been praying for faster airplanes -- we thought that would be our salvation," says Annie Hayes, an Australian conference organizer. "With the Internet, we can be so much more in touch with the world now, without actually leaving here."
Paul Gilding, the former head of Greenpeace, has an environmental consulting firm in Sydney: "Two years ago we thought we were going to have to leave Australia because you just couldn't operate a global business from here," he said.
"Clients would say, 'We'd love to have you as advisers, but you can't service us from Australia.' Now we're not only advising DuPont [in Delaware], but we're able to attract experts to come live in Sydney from all over the world because they feel they can have the best of our life style and be connected."
Jim Bacon, the Premier of Tasmania, the remote island off Australia's south coast, has reached for the Web with gusto. And no wonder. Tasmania has long been known as either "the beginning of the end of the world" or "the gateway to Antarctica." Says Mr. Bacon: "Suddenly we are connected. We have a little resort on the coast of Tasmania called Killynaught Cottages. The owners were telling me the other day they are getting all sorts of bookings now over the Internet, and just got one from Saudi Arabia."
Australians will often tell you that theirs has been a "derivative country." They would wait for things to be invented in the U.S. or U.K. and then adapt them. That may change, said Matthew Symons, director of Schoolsnet Australia. "The Internet got adopted here for education very early because we have all these far-flung schools where you had, say, one art teacher, working in total isolation -- so there was a real need to wire them all in. Once they were wired together, though, they started forming communities, and instead of looking for some American solution to their problems, they started sharing with one another and coming up with organic Australian solutions. It is a fascinating study in network effects."
Three years ago, Pauline Hanson, a xenophobic, anti-globalization politician, gained popularity here. One way the Australian Government sought to combat her influence was by wiring the whole country. "Hanson gained popularity because rural Australia felt it was being left behind -- banks were closing, telephone boxes were being removed. Rural communities felt there was unequal access to the new economy," said Education Minister David Kemp. "So the Government decided in 1998 to include access to Internet technology in the basic service package offered to everyone by the state phone company. She was taking our supporters and this was one way for us to win them back."
The only problem, of course, is that being wired is always a two-way street. The Australian mining company Western Minerals took advantage of the stock market's obsession with ".com" companies by abandoning the mining business and relisting itself on the stock exchange as a sex products store -- Adultshop.com, offering sexy lingerie. Years ago, the Australian Government set up an ethnic TV station called Imparja, to give a cultural voice to remote, outback Aboriginal communities. However, the station developed a taste for American sitcoms, particularly "Seinfeld." People from all over Australia -- including the Aborigines -- started watching it to soak up the worst of Americana rather than the best of the Aboriginal.
[end]
Carl
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