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the internet is serious business

First Web Index Declares Sweden Winners of The Internet

by Zoe Chevat | 2:08 pm, September 6th, 2012


webindex

Sweden, you have earned the first “official” World Wide Web bragging rights.

As reported by CNET Asia, the newly-crafted Web Index shows that Sweden is better than the rest of us at using the Internet. How is such a thing measured? The five-year survey of global web usage was conducted by Sir Tim Berners-Lee‘s World Wide Web Foundation, and uses a variety of factors to determine how the Internet is being used to impact growth and development in 61 countries. This includes tracking the number of users, strength of a nation’s technological framework, and counting broadband connections, but also looking at the much more nebulous factors of “political impact” and distribution of information across networks. Secondary data was gathered from multi-lateral organizations such as the World Bank, the World Economic Forum, and yes, Wikipedia.

The study’s website ranks the United States coming in second, with the UK in third. Six of the top ten are European countries, surprisingly outranking tech-industry juggernauts in Asia. Given that one of the measurements of the index is an availability-to-user ratio, countries like China, with higher population and a larger geographic area, might take a hit in the rankings simply due to size.

Just as interesting are the Index’s key findings about global Internet accessibility, namely that only 1-in-3 people use the Internet, and that the ratio is continentally lowest in Africa, where the it drops to 1-to-6. (I’m distressed to see that several times the report groups all African nations together without preamble, and would like to take this opportunity to remind everyone that Africa is a large continent made up of several autonomous countries, not a country itself.) Overall, the Index paints an interesting picture of the rapidly-expanding impact that the Web has had on our little blue planet in just a couple decades. Full details can be found in the easy-to-read PDF report, provided here.

(via CNET Asia.)

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  • http://twitter.com/KESwriter Kristine Starkey

    I’d to thank the Mary Sue for giving me something interesting to post to my Library Information Science course page that did not involve using the library website.

  • VFWVEPRWDC PZMJJMOTISFN

    surprisingly outranking tech-industry juggernauts in Asia. Given that
    one of the measurements of the index is an availability-to-user ratio,
    countries like China, with higher population and a larger geographic
    area, might take a hit in the rankings simply due to size.

    http://alexandria-moving.net/

  • Anonymous

    We’re No. One! We’re No. One!
    Suck it Finland! Keep your high quality cell phones, revolutionary Linux OS and overly aggressive birds. :P

  • http://twitter.com/Maya_Mayhem Maya Mayhem

    I apologize in advance if I come across the wrong way here; I am very active in open internet/privacy/copyright related forums, and this headline stood in stark contrast to everything I have been reading lately. I have no desire to offend any Swedes; I just want to get the info out there.
    The Swedish government’s actions against TPB & Peter Sunde, and the general internet snooping that started (or at least became public knowledge) early this year, make this a less than appropriate moment to hand out such honors. While I understand the article, or at least the ‘title’ awarded, is meant to be taken as slightly tongue-in-cheek, this just strikes me as an odd time… Sunde, who is being extradited (to face charges on a somewhat suspect sloppy govt ‘tax id number hack’ that he was allegedly involved in), while the whole world knows he is really being taken in for his involvement in TPB… Almost certainly, at least in part, due to pressure from the MPAA, RIAA & peers (probably the one thing I wouldn’t be able to come up with a solid citation on, due to the size and money behind the interests involved). Sunde, while not necessarily innocent of whatever he does end up being charged with, is someone who has fought for worldwide freedom of information and open internet most of his life; the founder of one of the most popular websites in the countries’ history, which very likely gave Sweden tons of business in hosting, VPNs, and other privacy related services and infrastructure. They are treating him like the worst kind of criminal since the recent push to shut down TPB, after showing them signs of safe harbor throughout the site’s history…
    The recent actions of a country’s government by no means dictate whether or not it has efficient hardware/architecture, sys admins, smart end users, good independent business models, etc… I actually have no doubt that this is most likely very accurate- the people of Sweden are incredibly tech savvy as a whole, and their country has had many years of strong growth in internet & IT. But I still think that they have some issues, in terms of full access, privacy, and other freedoms, and I feel it should be mentioned.
    The actions of their govt. do show that Sweden is maybe not exactly the holy land of internet privacy and free speech that, in my opinion, are key elements to how much a country ‘wins at the internet.’ The source document is very clear about how it came up with its statistics, and it seems very thorough; but I just felt it was important to mention these recent events, especially considering the phrasing & title of this Mary Sue piece.

  • http://twitter.com/Maya_Mayhem Maya Mayhem

    Interesting bit from the source document itself: “Yet in terms of their use and breadth of the web, Sweden has definite room for improvement, taking the twelfth spot on the list overall. Why is this the case? According to our data, while roughly 91% of Sweden’s population uses the web, the information available to them is surprisingly low compared with other top-ranking nations.”

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