British researchers have introduced a future orientation index to quantify the degree to which Internet users worldwide seek more information about years in the future than years in the past. They analyse Google logs and find a striking correlation between the country’s GDP and the predisposition of its inhabitants to look forward.
In the second year of their analysis (details of which are reported here:https://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2013/feb/08/countries-most-forward-thinking-visualised) Australian’s ranked fifth in the world, behind Germans.