Information to users

Interdependence, p. 3).
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information technology and the distribution of information of US origin - between the United States and other
compatriots or competitors.
For example, the United States has the %highest volume
of data communication, the most network access and service providers, the most Internet hosts, and the highest total number of Internet connections" in the world.39 In addition, the world seems to be more interested in what the United States (or American business) does than what any other country (or company) does. The United States has had great control over international information and communications; both the physical capabilities (hardware) and the content and its structures (software).
At the 1998 World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, CNN correspondent Jim Bittermann noted that in the area of technology specifically, as well as in many other domains, 'it is surprising and sobering to come to an international gathering . . . to find that all ears are inclined to hear what the US is doing. . . . No matter what resentment there
may be, for now, few have alternatives to the American way. . . . The next century will at least dawn as an American one."40
39 'Electronic Commerce: Opportunities and Challenges for
Government." (Paris: OECD, 1977), p. 71.
40 Jim Bittermann, Commentary for National Public Radio on
(continued...)
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The communications revolution “is of particular and
immediate significance to the United States, for the
technologies of the new age of communication have
increasingly become a principal engine of US economic
leadership and growth. These new technologies have fueled much of our current prosperity and may be the key to our continuing strength."41
This asymmetric information interdependence has placed the United States in a unique position. It is dominant both in the production of information and communications content and its accompanying technologies. This condition can be
understood as a type of hegemony: information hegemony.42
40 (. . . continued)
February 1, 1998, copy obtained through correspondence with the author.
41 Dante B. Fascell. “International Communications Policy:
Preparing for the Future" (Washington, D.C.: Center for Strategic and International Studies, Georgetown University, October 8, 1985) Vol. 8, No. 4, p. 3.
42 The term “hegemony'' is accompanied by some intellectual
baggage. There are theories of hegemonic stability, referring principally to the propensity for states to be in war; economic hegemony as in Immanuel Wallerstein's work on world systems
theory; as well as combinations of both in Paul Kennedy's works on great powers. But this view of the “hegemonic" status of the United States in information and culture is not my idea alone. It comes from the perceptions that the rest of the world, both
Western and non-Western, has of the United States. For example, in 1993, French Prime Minister Edouard Balladur talked about the “Commercial and cultural domination" and “hegemonic tendencies" of the United States (Federic Bobin. “L'accord sur le commerce
international, La declaration de politique generale du premier ministre, La France n'a jamais ete aussi grande que lorsqu'elle s'ouvre sur le monde" Le Monde, 17 December 1993, p. 3). Robert Keohane said in a panel discussion called “IPE Distinguished Senior Scholar Panel in Honor of Immanuel Wallerstein," (ISA Annual Meeting in Minneapolis, Minnesota, March 1998), that the (continued...)
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Since this condition of hegemony is imperfect, the United States cannot always dictate its desires in every situation, because of the nature of information itself as well as the nature of the interdependent world in which the United
States participates. Yet, it has been able to dictate its desires quite often over its history of participation in information and communications issues.
How did the United States reach the point at which it
could exercise such dominance and leadership? The next
chapter continues with the contextual development of
information and communications issues. It will address the historical perspective and identify the principles which help in understanding how policy decisions about information flows are made today.
42 (. . .continued)
United States is as hegemonic now as ever, both in a Gramscian sense and in the sense of Nye's 'soft power." Hegemony means
providing something 'extra" that you can use to 'perpetuate the issue above and beyond" what may be considered legitimate.
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Chapter III