I believe that by the year 2000 the US will have an equal or stronger network infrastructure than Singapore. Free enterprise will foster continued research and development work that the Singapore government may not be able to manage without major private partners. Therefore I would argue that the US could be in a more favorable technology infrastructure position than Singapore by the year 2000 and beyond. However, from my perspective, Singapore s approach does have two distinct advantages. Competition in the US is hindering our ability to develop a universal standard around credit card security on the Internet.
Universal standards are key to drive the complexities out of the marketplace.
The result of the competition between Apple and IBM for personal computer standards is an example of why universal standards are required to achieve success. However when large dollars are at stake, it is difficult to achieve the collaboration required to achieve such standards. Secondly, there is grave concern in the US around who will have access to the Internet. The social gap is widening between the economic sectors of the population. Therefore, it is likely this group will dominate the Internet skilled workforce and the ability to leverage the Internet to make money.