by Mark Ollig
Tim Berners-Lee is the director of
the World Wide Web Foundation.
Berners-Lee is, of course, most
famous for being the person who invented the hyper-linking program, which
became the World Wide Web.
His program consists of the set of
rules which allows us to connect and interact with content available on the
Internet via our web browsers.
Since its creation in 1989, the Web
has evolved greatly from being just an informational content source.
Today, we use the Web as a social
networking venue for keeping in touch with family and friends, and for
communicating with others about local, state, country, and global issues.
Using the Web, we obtain government
resources and information, conduct business, learn new skills, and so much
more.
The World Wide Web Foundation
recently released a report showing the rankings of the countries which are best
utilizing the Web.
Multi-country questionnaires used to
obtain the primary data were scored by experts and professionals in a number of
fields from each country. These scores were then checked and verified by the
peers and regional reviewers for each country.
The country Web index rankings were
also compiled using several existing sources, along with specific information
obtained from 2007 to 2011 from 61 countries. This information was then
combined, creating a composite index score.
Although many sources were used for
the final ranking scores, the overall Web Index comes from the scores computed
within three sub-indexes:
• communications and institutional
infrastructure sores;
• Web content and Web use scores;
and
• political, economic, and social
impact scores.
The final index rankings represent
the countries which have progressed faster and more effectively in harnessing
and developing the Web as the facilitator and means of increasing growth in
these sub-indexes.
The World Wide Web Foundation says
they hope this Web Index “will help deepen and broaden our understanding of the
impact of this most powerful tool [the Web] on humanity.”
Berners-Lee says he hopes the Web
Index will be used to inquire further into issues such as government openness
and censorship.
He also anticipates additional
countries and indexes will be included in future Web Index releases.
The Web contains more than
1-trillion public pages and more than 3.4 billion users, according to the World
Wide Web Foundation.
At the top of this year’s Web Index
ranking is Sweden, with a Web Index score of 100.
Sweden had high marks over the three
sub-indexes; scoring first for political, second for social, and third for
economic impact.
According to the report’s data, 91
percent of Sweden’s population is using the Web.
The US ranked second on the list
with a Web Index score of 97.31
One reason the US came in second was
because of its lower communications infrastructure score.
The US also ranked lower than Sweden
in the social, economic, and political impact scores.
I was somewhat surprised to read
from the report, that the US has a lower percentage of households with personal
computers than a number of other countries, such as Canada, Ireland, Japan, and
Norway.
The US did score the highest for
institutional infrastructure, Web content, and Web use.
Other reasons the US did not take
the top spot is because of its slower Internet bandwidth speeds – which average
around 47.2 megabits per second.
The US received high scores for the
quality and usefulness of government websites which provide online information
and services for its citizens.
Third place in the Web Index
rankings goes to the United Kingdom, which surpasses the US with its higher
percentage of mobile and broadband subscriptions.
The UK also tops the US in the
category of average Internet broadband speed, with a reported 166.1 megabits
per second.
“The scale and quality of available
content has been boosted by various public sector initiatives,” said the
foundation’s report regarding the UK.
The UK scored 93.83 on the
Foundation’s Web Index.
The ranking and scores of the
remaining seven countries in the top 10 are:
• Canada, 93.42.
• Finland, 91.88.
• Switzerland, 90.49.
• New Zealand, 89.15.
• Australia, 88.44.
• Norway, 87.76.
• Ireland, 87.42.
With regards to the Web, Berners-Lee
said, “We want to take this issue about whether or not people are a part of the
information society, and help increase awareness that it’s as important as
access to water and vaccinations – it’s not a secondary issue.”
In the foundation’s report,
Berners-Lee talks about his vision over the long term; he hopes the Web will be
used as the framework to support “true cultural transformation.”
“The real key is to embrace other
cultures, to get to know one another at the global level,” Berners-Lee said.
This quote should give us pause to
reflect upon how we communicate with others around the world when in social
chat rooms, or other online venues. We need to be mindful of the values and
beliefs of other cultures.
The World Wide Web Foundation is
located at http://www.webfoundation.org.
