If steel production is a key indicator of progress in an industrial society,
computer use is a key indicator in the information economy of the late twentieth
century. In this area, there is no contest: the United States has one computer
for every three people; China has one for every 1,000 people. With 74 million
computers out of a worldwide total of 173 million, the United States leads the
world by a wide margin in the computerization of its economy. China, which has
just 1.2 million computers, lags far behind not only the United States but much
of the rest of the world as well.