 The Llittle Red Notebook |
US could lose high-tech edge, study says – The Boston Globe — This is just peachy.
China and India are educating so many scientists and engineers that it is all but certain that the United States will lose some of its technological advantage and will suffer difficult economic adjustments, according to a recently published paper.
By 2010, Chinese universities will graduate more students with science and engineering doctorates than their US counterparts; India will also gain ground, according to the paper, by Richard Freeman, a professor in Harvard University’s economics department. And once these countries achieve a large enough pool of technical talent, they can challenge established trade patterns in which the United States exports advanced technology and developing nations produce commodities.
John,
There’s hi-tech and hi-touch. All technology has to have strategic and military benefits to advance commercially. The really hi-tech stuff won’t make it to the Internet. If we have to reach out and touch somebody, you will see technology deployed that you never imagined. All this stuff we use is great for keeping in touch with each other. As far as the heavy stuff, it’s under lock and key. I guess people want to endulge in fantasy and think they are going to change the established economic order or develop the next killer application. Our hi-tech toys are fun and have helped create jobs and new products. If you review the dotcom boom, the results speak volumes about the economic limits people choose to ignore. The biggest change that technology has made could be in perception. In politics perception is as good as reality. People overlook the obvious and pretend that physics can be altered or shaped to match an alternative reality. What you get for your money is a virtual reality. That was the next big thing. Nobody could make money from it, but it looked good online and the VC’s lined up behind it. It just didn’t do much of anything or change reality. Who can argue with cash, when it is right there in front of you?
There are reasons. If one wants big bucks in the US, one gets a business degree.
Those with engineering and science degrees (including CS degrees) are woefully underpaid, considering the relative difficulty of both college and real-world education in these fields compared to business or MBA degrees. To top it off, the job market for techies is worse here because many tech jobs are moving to Asia to take advantage of all those tech grads that will work cheaply.
In other words, “Houston, we have a problem.”
Does the US have a hi-tech edge?
I thought the Bush administration was actively working to destroy it.
De difference between chinese and indian government and yours: The former are investing for the progress of their coutries and peoples. The US administration is working only for big business… In the short term it will make huge fortunes even more humongous. In the long term the US will cease to matter… Slowly your economy will start to go down, your military will one day rule the country with some sort of dictatorship…
Hey?!?!
Typo:
“NZ City of New Zealand “?!
Uh… NZ is a country.
I’m pretty sure that looks like Auckland.
Floyd,
A mind is a terrible thing to waste and sometimes a mind is a terrible thing that just must be wasted. That’s why there is Mr. Jack Daniels.
A good editorial on this in the July 7th issue of EDN, titled “Are we losing our innovation religion?:
http://www.edn.com/article/CA601510.html
Tidbits:
However, all this outsourcing buries a reality: Once your outsource partners learn how you define products, how you market them, and whatever other “secret” understanding you have or you assume that you have, and you have an “in” on your markets, those partners no longer need you. It’s that simple. The “secret sauce” you think makes a difference may not be such a secret or maybe isn’t the barrier to entry that you thought it was.
If a company thinks it can survive and remain a market force if it just does marketing and branding, while abandoning true R&D, design, and innovation, the company is deluding itself. The shelves of Wal-Mart are full of brands that used to be real players and now exist only as nameplates.
As a patriotic citizen of the USA, I’m not worried.
Technological advancement is largely driven by a strong individualistic bent. The innovator must realize that he and his ideas are totally unique, and he must have faith in that realization. Otherwise he is too worried what his idiot boss will say.
The USA’s predominantly Christian upbringing is a stupendous, and totally ignored, advantage. Christians “know the truth”, and it sets them free — in this case, specifically free from believing anybody else is better than them, even their bosses.
I know China’s masses lack this benefit. I’m not very familiar with the Hindi faith, but I doubt it provides for the personal self-esteem that Christianity bestows.
Feynman’s Rainbow (c)2003 , which I recently read, notes that fewer than 800 Americans earn a Ph.D. in physics each year. Just a little nugget to roll around in your noggin.
“Does the US have a hi-tech edge? I thought the Bush administration was actively working to destroy it.”
Amen Miguel. God will just give us all that hi tech stuff if we just ban abortion, keep executing 12 years olds (“After all” one good church going lady told me, “Its that Jesus would want”), band stem cell research using material rich people abandon when they get a kid via in vitro fertilization, stop teaching evolution in schools, and most importantly – concentrate liberals like me in “special” camps.
Yeah we do all this and Jesus will start handing out PowerBooks to each believer.
You have to love those neo cons.
Oy
It seems like our best Internet technology, is good for one thing. More ads! Then there are people like Dvorak here who will write the truth and some folks don’t want to believe them. The same folks will believe the ads even though Dvorak ain’t trying to sell them anything. Sometimes you just can’t give the truth away.
Actually all those Indian and Chinese engineering grads want to come to the U.S. to work – so they can make more money and send it home to the families they leave behind….
Among the problems to overcome are the attitudes a generation of technologists are passing on to their children. I’m an IT worker, and I’m certainly steering her away from a technology career. Rather, I am presenting it to her as an “adjunct” skill; something that could enhance her abilities in another field. I’m doing this for two reasons; one, the state of basic technology education in our schools is abysmal, second, the tech field is still male dominated, and as overall ability increases in the Far East, it will become even more so (male dominated). There is no sense in handicapping a career that hasn’t begun yet. This isn’t a sexist viewpoint (so much) rather than a concern that American business as a collective whole is devaluing the American workforce, in part because of the above issues (and of course, the cost of maintaining a decent standard of living to all. American business no longer believes that is its responsibility).