Having dropped off the data with Autumn Belfontaine, Steffi continued through the corridors of Engineering with Ken Redmond. “I’m not that much of a statistician, but it was interesting to see the patterns in the distribution of network speeds and disruptions. I’d expected a lot of Africa and Asia to have trouble keeping their networks up. Until the recent mini-sat constellations, a lot of those countries didn’t even have Internet outside their major cities. But I’d expected better of Europe.”
Ken gave her a wry smile. “You must not have done much traveling back when you were still on Earth.”
“I was pretty busy, but I did go abroad to some conferences–“
“In major cities, with people who had a Western education, often at universities in the US. Not out in the hinterland, working with people who’re living the way their ancestors did since time immemorial. Now there’s an eye-opener for you.” Ken paused as if considering what he was about to say. “Back in the Energy Wars, I did a tour of duty in the Middle East. We were at a base right near one of the bigger cities, and one of the things I really remember is how, whenever anything went wrong, everyone would wait for someone in charge to come and give orders. No one wanted to be the guy who stuck his neck out and tried something that might work.”
Steffi’s expression must’ve been more transparent than she realized, because Ken responded, “It’s a lot more common than you think, and not just in Third World countries. Heck, half of Europe is damn close to it, just not as crude about it. But you go to Germany or Sweden or any of those countries, visit an office and need something copied, only the copier’s jammed. In any American office, someone would be opening the thing up and digging the paper out to get it running again. Over there, only the person with the proper authorization can even touch the inner workings of the copier.”
“Come to think of it, that would go a long way to explain why almost all the connections that seemed pretty jury-rigged looked to be in the US. Some Canadian ones, a couple from Australia and New Zealand, but that was about it.”