Software For Hard Times

Even socialist Vietnam wants in on the information bandwagon, betting that info-tech exports will spark a hike in prosperity

How far has the information revolution spread? Ask Tran Coi, 27, a resident of Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam, who says the only difficult thing about the New Economy is trying to explain it to his mother. Coi's father, a soldier, was killed in the Vietnam War a few months before Coi was born, and Coi's mom had to raise a family of five by farming a small piece of land near Danang in central Vietnam. But her youngest son is now a senior programmer at FPT-Soft, a state-owned software-development company at which he designs websites. "My mother doesn't really...

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