Matthew Weigand

The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) has ranked South Korea as the most developed economy in information and communication technology. In its ‘Measuring the Information Society 2011’ report, the ITU compared Internet access, use, and skills in 152 countries. Following South Korea were Sweden, Iceland, Denmark, and Finland. After that was Hong Kong, Luxembourg, Switzerland, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom. The United States ranked 17th.

On September 4, 2011, decorated Korean war veteran and schoolteacher David Gambrell Morris passed away at the age of 82. He was survived by 5 children, 10 grandchildren, and 5 great-grandchildren.

He was born on October 7, 1928, in Vian, Oklahoma, and spent his early life in Muskogee. The summer after he finished high school, he went down to Texas to work the oil fields. His Texas excursion was cut short when his sweetheart, Mary, wrote him a letter saying things weren’t going to work out. Unwilling to let the girl he met at Baptist dance night go, he immediately returned to Muskogee and convinced her otherwise. When she asked why, he said her cooking was just too good to pass up. Using the funds from the pawning of his most expensive possession, his trumpet, he eloped with Mary and married her that same day. The night after the ceremony, they each returned to their own family’s houses, undoubtedly full of new plans.

Mexico’s environmental policy has been undergoing some significant changes at the behest of President Calderon, all intended to put the focus of the country’s environmental development on sustainable, or green, energy production.

“In the golden age of Asia, Korea was one of its lamp bearers. And that lamp is waiting to be lighted once again. For the illumination of the East.” Rabindranath Tagore wrote this famous poem in 1929, and it was on the minds of many people during Indian President Pratibha Patil’s visit to South Korea on July 25.

If you were in the vicinity of the Lotte Hotel in downtown Seoul on June 20 to 21 of this year, you might have noticed an increased security presence and an unusually large number of nondescript black cars. That was due to the Global Green Growth Summit, in which 91 foreign dignitaries from 25 different countries gathered to discuss the issues of climate change and the technological response to these unfortunate realities.

A new law passed in India and a new set of laws being considered in China may spell the end for many types of outsourcing to the two countries. On April 13 of this year, India issued final regulations to implement the Information Technology (Amendment) Act of 2008, dealing with the protection of personal information. These regulations will effectively eliminate the possibility in both India and China that companies can effectively collect and utilize the personal data of customers.

The cloud is the new thing. Put your apps in the cloud! Put your business processes and web services there too! Hey, why not upload your customer data and company history while you’re at it? The cloud is always there, always accessible, and always will be. Keeping your data on your own servers is so 1990s. Having your own IT department is so 1980s.

Several recent incidents online have shown that the Internet can be a radical force for change. For those nations who try to control the Internet, these latest developments call into question their efforts. Is there any point in stemming the Internet tide?