America's obsession with the Joneses

We Americans do a great many things well. Unfortunately, that includes Opus Dei-like self-flagellation. A case in point: The blogs are passing around a New York Times story that says we have a big Internet speed problem. Evidently, our web traffic lanes are kinda slow and we're not keeping up with the proverbial Joneses. The United States as a whole, the Times reports, comes in "25th behind South Korea, which has the fastest speeds in the world. Even Romania clocks in ahead." The oh so subtle meme: We're a bumbling giant that can no longer get anything right. Woe is us. To be sure, we do need faster, better broadband, especially in rural heartland locales like Idaho (the geographic subject of the piece). However, the Gray Lady failed to put the issue into perspective. Yes, the facts are correct. They just forgot to tell you that South Korea is only 38,622 square miles in size (or slightly larger than Indiana). Romania is 92,085 square miles. In contrast, the good old USA is 2.9 million square miles in land size! Idaho alone is 83,557 square miles, twice the size of South Korea. Oops. Not to go all Captain America on you, but let's not forget who invented the Internet and its subsequent innovations. That would be us, the bumbling giant. Getting our own broadband house up to spec is a tall order (not to mention an expensive one). We'll do it. But in our case, size does matter. Like Rome, our continental railway and interstate highway systems weren't built in a day.

Credit: Illustration by Allan Sanders.