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Don't forget that Western civilisation alone didn't invent the modern world, far from it. The world has been globalised for a long time. From the spread of agriculture/crops/domesticated animals, and of course inventions, the West has taken advantage of the countless advances of the Middle East, India, China and indeed the Americas. Without their gazillion inventions Europe would be nothing like it became.
Im not disputing that at all. The world has a history of innovation being centered at different civilizations at different times. All Im saying is I dont see it shifting this century anyway. And I base that on all of the things above. I mean if anything there has been a consolidation to more American strength. Our tech brands are stronger than theyve ever been worldwide.
And by the way I find it so amusing that people have this mistaken view today where America is probably the most dominant its ever been tech wise in history. I mean do you realize the market cap of Apple alone is 732 BILLION DOLLARS. I mean thats just one company!
Without China's workers, factories and rare earth minerals you would have a shred of apple peel instead of a whole apple.
Without China's workers, factories and rare earth minerals you would have a shred of apple peel instead of a whole apple.
Read my response further down about manufacturing. It means basically nothing as far as innovation and future success. And any look at the worlds top companies today by market cap will illustrate that point. The question isnt what country the robot machines are in it is who is going to design the applications for the future. And that aint.China.
Read my response further down about manufacturing. It means basically nothing as far as innovation and future success. And any look at the worlds top companies today by market cap will illustrate that point. The question isnt what country the robot machines are in it is who is going to design the applications for the future. And that aint.China.
I don't see why you dismiss China's potential so quickly. China is innovative in the IT and nuclear technology areas. I see no reason why China can't design and patent robots.
Read my response further down about manufacturing. It means basically nothing as far as innovation and future success. And any look at the worlds top companies today by market cap will illustrate that point. The question isnt what country the robot machines are in it is who is going to design the applications for the future. And that aint.China.
Design and innovation means nothing without someone to make it a reality. I can imagine a fantastic FTL spaceship to take us to the stars, but the actual making it happen is the big thing.
Im not dismissing manufacturing but manufacturing is not something that drives forward progress or in any way would hamper Americas place in the tech economy. Its a new paradigm, and im sure youll all see in a few years what I mean more if you dont already. The physical is basically done in tech. Once you reach a point where you have a slab, it is permanently connected, and can basically do anything and has converged basically the entire former consumer electronics industry, the question in society to drive the world and companies further becomes one of IDEAS. And that is exactly what you see in all the big name billion dollar startups now. Be it netflix, or whatsapp, or uber etc. And in those terms, manufacturing means little. It is all.about creativity and being able to envision a world better than the one you live in using our connected devices. And in that Im sorry but Asia poses no threat.
Im not dismissing manufacturing but manufacturing is not something that drives forward progress or in any way would hamper Americas place in the tech economy. Its a new paradigm, and im sure youll all see in a few years what I mean more if you dont already. The physical is basically done in tech. Once you reach a point where you have a slab, it is permanently connected, and can basically do anything and has converged basically the entire former consumer electronics industry, the question in society to drive the world and companies further becomes one of IDEAS. And that is exactly what you see in all the big name billion dollar startups now. Be it netflix, or whatsapp, or uber etc. And in those terms, manufacturing means little. It is all.about creativity and being able to envision a world better than the one you live in using our connected devices. And in that Im sorry but Asia poses no threat.
Of course manufacturing is still important. And there is a lot of innovation in Asia these days. A lot of apps, for instance, have been designed in Asia and by Asian firms.
Oh and moving on since Ive basically given my opinion on the world future tech economy. I wanted to go back and address one of OPs other points. That we are lagging in 'internet technology'. This is just a bogus claim on the face it if you understand the future market uses of the net. First of all our internet backbone in this country is second to none, and that would obviously be expected because the architecture was built here first and ofcourse has been incrementally improved over the past 30 years. OP seems to confuse last mile service as some indicator to the advancement of the IP network. Now landline internet access is probably the least important its ever been. The only question these days is what is the backhaul to the cell tower because THAT is where the IP access is increasingly becoming dominant not only in America but in most of the rest of the world where landline IP access was never cost effective. And in that regard America lags behind nobody. For the size of our population and land mass, all FOUR of our national wireless companies have LTE rolled out and even the smallest of the four will have LTE pops (that is population covered) of 300 million by the end of this year. Thats out of a total population of 308 million. And thats our smallest LTE network. That means all four of our mobile companies cover virtually all of America with LTE by year end. There is not a European country yet that can say that. As far as spectrum badly needed to serve all the new applications and to drive innovation, America is again situated perfectly. We have had more spectrum auctions and earlier than any other country and we continue freeing up spectrum now in 600 mhz for future growth. With the recent AWS auctions, American mobile providers now have vastly more mhz of potential LTE spectrum than any other country. So as far as LTE deployment we were early in the game and that is where the innovation is as far as internet infrastructure currently.
Last edited by Chris Meyers; 06-14-2015 at 09:38 PM..
I regularly travel to China and Hong Kong, and I do not agree that IT infrastructure in China is that advanced at all. It certainly still lags behind the US IT infrastructure. Hong Kong, along with South Korea and Japan, might be ahead compared to most areas in the US, but that is because all three are very densely populated and that is certainly an advantage when setting up infrastructure. Out of all places, I still find the Internet speed in Manhattan the most impressive. That might be because I access usually US-based sites, but then, so do most of the world.
Internet content is arguably as important as the infrastructure and this is where the Anglosphere shines. In a third-tier city in China, the Internet connection was not good, even in their CBD area. Used it for a VOIP call and definitely, that connection is not that advanced as the OP makes it out to be. And one cannot access all Google services (including Gmail and Play Store), facebook, Dropbox, Instagram, Flickr, etc. Almost 90% of what I use the Internet is blocked. I have to learn how to use Baidu, which language aside, still lags behind Google in user friendliness. One might be able to access Naver at lightning speed in Seoul or even outside South Korea, but only Koreans use it. I have always liked taking Korean Air and Asiana, but both of their websites or phone apps are horrible. This is in comparison to Delta and United, whose websites and phone apps are outstanding, but I still prefer the Korean airlines as the inflight service of US-based airlines are not as good as that of Asian airlines.
You are completely wrong. I mean look who dominates the tech world today. Apple, Google, Amazon, Netflix, Facebook, new startups like Uber. I mean we literally own and control the new economy top to bottom worldwide. Everybody from LA to Indonesia wants an iPhone, or an Android phone, they want to go to Starbucks, then want to use uber to get a cab. China will never have the creativity or just the mainstream media cool of America. Weve moved on past hardware tech to applications of that hardware and america will dominate for another 100 years based off our advantages in these areas.
I was sitting here thinking; we're far behind in the US that most of us are using devices that run either Windows (Microsoft US) or Apple OS (US) or Android (Google US). The hardware is either Intel or AMD processors (both US). Most people search through Google, Yahoo or Bing, all US. Many use Facebook again, US.
Yeah the US really needs to catch up. We should be leading in hardware, software and internet...oh wait.
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