25 June 2011

The road to wealth: don't speak English
I've just read an interesting article on the Register (a news site for IT and science geeks).  The article mostly talks about the governance of the internet internationally, so regular readers won't be particularly interested, but here's an interesting thought:
But the internet doesn't work like that: a country that puts in internet infrastructure is more likely to see money pouring out as local ISPs have to pay peering partners to deliver content from Europe and America to their customers.
We put this point to Dr Touré, who pointed out how wrong we were: "Forget Europe, it's America that takes the money ... the content comes from America".
So while the international community is clamouring to learn English to improve international trade, English is becoming a money-sink for everyone outside the US as we continue to spend our money on American content, money which doesn't come back out.

Interesting thought.

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