Forum Moderators: open
E-commerce revenues however stem by 43,7% from the US, while Western Europe with 25,7% comes in second , and Japan with 15,8% third.
Another interesting result is despite the problems the economy, especially the e-commerce, had to face in 2001, ecommerce revenue grew by 73.4%, from $354.9 billion in 2000 to $615.3 billion.
The troubling thing with those stats is the way they are trying to break things down along old geographic and political lines. There is no "over there" on the interenet, there is only "here".
What a beautiful sentence.
Only it does not meet reality.
In reality the internet is becoming increasingly similar to the physical world, as well as to the traditional media.
It doesn't matter from what angle you're looking at it, wether it be economical, cultural, political - the vision of one worldwide internet holds true only in that sense in which a globalized major business world understands the term worldwide.
Take those stats: We are given Western Europe, the USA, Japan - for how much of the world does this account? Where's China, India, Africa, Latin America?
Apart from that: It may be argued that those countries/regions mentioned do have many things in common regarding the internet. But taking just a quick look at the most obvious field, commerce, makes clear how big the differences really are.
It still is a major task for any business to globalize just for those areas. It's Euro-land against Dollar-land against Yen-land. It's different taxes and laws. And, most importantly, it's different languages.
On a second look it becomes quite clear that other divides are even deeper. The difference between the US and Scandinavia may be not that important on the web, but think Central and Eastern Europe: sure there is a small tech savvy web elite communicating worldwide, but generally the Russian or Ukrainian web is as seperated from the US web then their counterparts in the real world.
What those stats reflect also are very concrete political and economical realities in different parts of the world.
The figures for online population and for e-shopping reflect how those countries are willing and able to adopt the internet.
"over here"
That was a vision being true in a very limited way in the beginning of the internet, when it was in the hands of a mixture of anarchic and scientific communities, centered in the USA and accompanied by trendsetters from all over the world.
Today it's a vision pursued by Microsoft.
There is no "over there" on the interenet, there is only "here".
I agree with heini, it's a nice catchphrase that doesn't meet reality.
To some extent, country borders are less visible. And, the net does indeed support that people sharing ideas connect globally.
However, the large cultural groups are still related to geographical and political borders. They will for many years to come. Many aspects of net usage is subject to national legislation. And, language is very important.
There sure are "us", "them", "here" and "over there" issues on the net.
