Skype's humble origins

With a son in England we just love Skype. Conor calls on Sundays and when a family emergency came up this year, we could stay in touch with Skype downloaded to the iPhone, hearing him across the Atlantic with the same clarity as next door. Best of all, it's free.

Well, not free to Microsoft, which paid $8.5 billion in May to buy Skype. Nor to eBay, which made a tidy profit after buying it in 2006 from Niklas Zennstrom of Sweden and Janus Friis of Denmark for a mere $2.6 billion (after they improved it). Swedes and Danes. That sounds like the right origin for a word like "skype," doesn't it? Plenty of smart people who like technology over there, too.

So it may surprise you as much as it did me to learn that Skype's high-tech origins, the programmers who laid the foundation for the original and groundbreaking programming a decade ago, are from (drum roll, please): Estonia.

E-what?

Tiny Estonia, or e-Stonia, as it's sometimes called, is one of the world's most wired nations. This Baltic country, just a tad bigger than Vermont, by contrast is also one of Europe's poorest. One of the former Soviet Republics, Estonia has been occupied for five centuries by a long list of other oppressors, including France, Germany, and ironically, Denmark and Sweden. Independence is relatively new to them, so they've made the most of it even in this tough world economy.

In the 1990s Estonia focused on Internet technology while most of us had yet to hear of a hyperlink. Their government encouraged computer developers and programmers, and Kazaa was born. Kazaa is the peer-to-peer file-sharing network of millions of people (think YouTube without video) that gave birth to Skype technology.

Estonia is the world's first country to cast election ballots digitally, using the Internet and a national ID. In January, Estonia also started an official, volunteer cyber army in the wake of a 2007 hacker fiasco. The Cyber Defense League is a watchdog and monitoring group. The government is considering a national draft to staff it 24/7.

One in 10 Estonians is still unemployed and one-fifth live in poverty. Yet Estonia's economic recovery fares better than Western counterparts. How? The government's austere spending, coupled with pro-market and telecom-focused policies.

They've reduced their budget deficit to 1.7 percent of GDP. To compare, ours is hovering around 10 percent. That's different from overall national debt, where Estonia also fares better around 8 percent, compared to our public debt of 72 percent. Tuesday Congress voted down raising the government's debt ceiling.

Imagine living in a place where jobs and livable wages are scarce, yet free Internet booths are everywhere and even grandma can Skype.

"We are so made that we can derive intense enjoyment from a contrast and very little from a state of things." - Sigmund Freud

Sholeh Patrick is a columnist for the Hagadone News Network with degrees in international studies and law. Email sholehjo@hotmail.com