Per capita use of the Internet in the United States makes Americans the world's third best-connected citizens. One other nation has twice the per capita number of America's users. First best-connected are the people of Finland, where 62 persons per thousand are on the Internet and next, Iceland with 42 per thousand. Following the United States with 31 per thousand, are Norway, Australia, Sweden, New Zealand, Canada, Switzerland, Singapore, Netherlands, Denmark, Britain, and Austria.

Mobile telephones are carried by nearly a third of Finland's population of five million. Pay telephones are nearly extinct. Even past models of mobile phones have given way to E-mail- sending cellular phones, allowing users to browse for news events as well as the World Wide Web sites of the Internet. Nokia has produced a new model, the 9000 communicator, a combination computer/phone which allows Internet access to users riding on public transportation or sitting in restaurants.

Shopping, banking, and the making of social connections have jumped quickly from on site locales to the dimensions of virtual reality, turning the kind of computerized activities more common in California's Silicone Valley into every day phenomenon among Finns. Reasons given as to why the Finns have taken so quickly to the World Wide Web vary. Some believe it is because of superior public schooling, while others point to Finland's strong commitment to basic research. Also, long winter nights may have some bearing upon the behavior of a people who are much given to staying indoors.

Even in grocery stores the Finnish people go shopping with "electronic wallets." They also go to school, taking courses given in far distant locales. Visits into Finnish library files are common. Finns can also read newspapers and buy lottery tickets. Their government subsidizes a great variety of ties to computers and cellular phones.

Other Nordic nations, including Sweden, Norway, Iceland, and Denmark, comprise an area that finds its peoples are, proportionately, the Internet's foremost enthusiasts. While the United States boasts a much-advanced electronic culture, that culture has not yet affected daily life as it does in Finland or Iceland. Finland's 33 year-old Minister of Education, Olli-Pekka Heinonen, has announced that his country will soon be spending nearly 3 percent of its gross national product on computer research and development. This year his Ministry plans to spend over four-hundred million dollars to educate a million Finns about Internet usage. In three years, all of Finland's schools will be Internet-connected.

Even chat rooms for alcoholics are popular. Not that the significance of such chatting necessarily surpasses regular meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous, they stress, but some feel that there are greater bursts of honesty among on-line communicators.

The objective of the Finns, according to their education minister, is "a society where competence is based on knowledge, know-how, and the creation of new economic wealth."

An Invention Yields no Royalties

Eudora, the E-Mail software used by eighteen million, garners no royalties for its modest inventor, Steve Dorner. The "Dor" in Eudora stands for the first syllable in Mr. Dorner's name, though a short story by author Eudora Welty also played a part in the E-Mail's naming. When he worked during the 1980's on the computing staff of the University of Illinois, Mr. Dorner was paid only a salary. He received no royalties for Eudora because, as he explains, the invention was created during a period while he worked for hire.

Qualcomm, Inc., a San Diego communications firm, has now bought licensing agreements from the university, for development rights and, in the future, the trademark. The inventor, who still resides in Illinois, has been hired by Qualcomm, saying that while he gets no royalties, his satisfaction lies in having completed a job well done. His wife, preferring her household in Illinois, has no wish to move to San Diego, and Dorner thus works in a woodworking shop adjacent to his Illinois house.

His job, improving software, requires intense concentration and constant focus. Mr. Dorner, attempting to improve his product, turns his focus to the problems users tell him he must solve. Such solutions, he says, do not always accord with the solutions they suggest. There are times when he feels that all eighteen million users are hostile and unhappy with his work, but he keeps at it, forever aiming to create a better product.