man in his early 30s, rather more saturnine than the average Swede. The room he was shown to was stately, furnished in a traditional English style. It was not unfamiliar to him and nor was his interlocutor. It was an unlikely looking room in which to foment, even a mite unwittingly, a digital revolution from, and yet that was exactly what was happening. Jan Stenbeck, for it was he who had called Matias, was a business mogul, who behaved – and looked – larger than life. A man of vast appetites, he used to go to Luxembourg to eat, and that’s where his managers would fly in for meetings on a Saturday, then party with him on the Sunday. His favourite indulgence was a simple dish of mashed potatoes, egg yolk, cream and Russian caviar. This unlikely exterior belied a great visionary and innovator, and a nurturer of big ideas and big talents. Stenbeck had a simple request: “Matias, I want you to do the biggest portal in Europe for the internet.” He added that it was a “meeting point that’s coming on” and “we have to be the biggest”. Matias took space in the basement of Stenbeck’s house. He remembered saying to himself, “this is the future”, and set to work building a European portal from scratch, at that stage telephone enabled. It was called everyday.com. Meanwhile, something was astir in Sweden. It was on its way to becoming one of the most digital countries in the world – faster than any other. Outsiders marvelled. It had much to do with government sponsorship: an early push of computers into schools. On 5 February 1994, Premier Carl Bildt sent an email to President Bill Clinton: the first email contact between two heads of government. Bildt became excited; and two days later gave a speech – a very un-Swedish rhetorical speech – and one which did not even reflect official government policy. Its themes were mankind, technology and the future. He said: “After the agricultural society and the industrial society we are facing the next big leap in human development – the information society.” Bildt’s moderate party and the Social Democrats ascended to power in the 1990s; the Social Democrats were later converts but by 1997 had drunk the Kool-Aid and introduced the “home PC” reforms for employees to lease a computer from the company they worked for deducted from their monthly pay. Penetration rocketed. In 1998, Carl Bildt’s election manifesto contained the slogan “broadband for everyone”. He lost the election but won the policy. Telia, aided by the housing cooperatives, soon created an internet with unprecedented penetration levels (92 per cent by 2010).