What are the most advanced countries in information technology?
Information technology runs the world and probably the better part of your life right now. People knew we would hit that point a long time before we even started imagining the things people use on the regular today. However, the probably didn’t imagine how far the 10 most advanced countries in information technology would get by now. They can compare in importance with the 10 most advanced countries in agriculture because even the raw produce, taken from the ground and handled by hard-working people eventually has to pass through some sort of smart device which will record some of its qualities or its quantity. Everything from our food to the way we eat it is becoming more and more dependent on technology. However, things were completely different not so long ago.
everything possible/Shutterstock.com
Let’s take a trip back to the 60s. A time of psychedelic rock, free love, short skirts and long hair. People had to use a phone as a phone and clocks and watches were the only way to tell the time. Netflix sounded like a villain from some crazy comic book and people had to walk up to you with a turntable or a tape recorder so you could listen to their new mixtape. Then, in the year of 1965, a small Italian company called Olivetti dropped what became known as the Programma 101 on the market and set the beginning of a new era that will either end in making us god-like or killing us. This was the era of the PC or as some of us still call it – the Personal Computer. This one came at the humble price of over three thousand dollars but played its important role in the Apollo 11 mission, the Vietnam War and across many hospitals and schools in the developed world. Thus, the world of technology set off on the long, winding road to putting the hardware capabilities of a single early personal computer in a device that fits on your wrist.
The forefathers of the laptop that I am typing this article on were known as microcomputers. Today you would expect to see a credit card-sized fully capable computer but then people expected something that did not take a whole room. These new microcomputers were far too expensive to be sold in quantities and usually came in a kit which had to be assembled with no interchangeable parts. The first breakthrough in hobbyist/home computers came in the late 70s with the Commodore PET, followed by the Apple II (which was surprisingly very reasonably priced).
According to Moore’s law, which still stands correct, computing power roughly doubles every two years. To save you a long history lesson, just imagine the mind-blowing development that put the computing power that directed wars, decided fates and put a man on the moon in the palm of your hands and amplified it over a thousand times. Nowadays, we’re in the feet of the Internet of Things era where everything around us is “intelligent” and connected. Let’s take a look at the countries which brought us here – the 10 most advanced countries in information technology ranked by their Network Readiness Index, which was reported in 2014 as a part of a survey carried out by INSEAD, the World Economic Forum and Cornell University.
