April 8th, 2005
The decline of the West
The U.S. tech industry, as represented by North American universities, is demonstratively losing it edge. The best the U.S. could do in the world finals of the Association for Computing Machinery International Collegiate Programming Contest was 17th place (the University of Illinois). Universities in China and Russia took the top prizes. The West has been in decline for several years in the Olympics of programming. Outgoing Intel CEO Craig Barrett and others in Silicon Valley have expressed major concerns about the U.S.’s fading technology leadership, citing a lack of focus on science and engineering education and insufficient federal funding for research as causes.
ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest winning team, Shanghai Jiaotong University (Photo: Clark Baker)
In a recent column Peter Cochrane, former chief technologist at BT (British Telecom), wrote:
At the height of the dot-com bust San Francisco police were finding over 80 cars a day with the keys left in the ignition at San Francisco airport. This was mainly down to the population of Indian and Chinese immigrant engineers and scientist going back home. Having suddenly had their employment terminated by American companies and corporations they had no choice–it was time to go home.
Having been employed for many years in Silicon Valley, they had learned about turning ideas into commercial success. They’d learnt about capitalism, manufacturing, sales and marketing–and they had learnt how to network and how to manage. No surprise then that these people are now the heart of the outsourcing industry in India and the manufacturing miracle that has become China.
This is all good news for the world from the perspective of wealth redistribution, as a key element of globalization, and of course for cultural exchange. And, perhaps even, as a mechanism for the lessening of racial intolerance and the risks from future terrorism.
The bad news for the Valley is that these workers are not coming back and the holes they have left may well be permanent. Worse, the output of universities in the United States, especially in terms of scientists and engineers, may not be sufficient to rekindle past glory.
New York Times columnist Tom Friedman recently took up the topic in his new book, The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century (an excerpt appeared in the NYT magazine on April 3), suggesting that a new phase globalization and technologies like the Internet, open source and VoIP are "flattening" the world, eating away at U.S.’s ability to compete in engineering and science fields.
…Globalization 3.0 not only differs from the previous eras in how it is shrinking and flattening the world and in how it is empowering individuals. It is also different in that Globalization 1.0 and 2.0 were driven primarily by European and American companies and countries. But going forward, this will be less and less true. Globalization 3.0 is not only going to be driven more by individuals but also by a much more diverse — non-Western, nonwhite — group of individuals. In Globalization 3.0, you are going to see every color of the human rainbow take part.
”Today, the most profound thing to me is the fact that a 14-year-old in Romania or Bangalore or the Soviet Union or Vietnam has all the information, all the tools, all the software easily available to apply knowledge however they want,” said Marc Andreessen, a co-founder of Netscape and creator of the first commercial Internet browser. ”That is why I am sure the next Napster is going to come out of left field. As bioscience becomes more computational and less about wet labs and as all the genomic data becomes easily available on the Internet, at some point you will be able to design vaccines on your laptop.”
He cites an "ambition gap," saying that Americans have gotten lazy compared to students and works in China and India, and echoing Barrett’s comments that the U.S. isn’t producing enough engineers and scientists. Friedman conclude the NYT magazine excerpt with the following anecdote:
When I was growing up, my parents used to say to me, ”Tom, finish your dinner — people in China are starving.” But after sailing to the edges of the flat world for a year, I am now telling my own daughters, ”Girls, finish your homework — people in China and India are starving for your jobs.”
It might also be time to learn Chinese…
Dan Farber, editor-in-chief of CNET News.com, has more than 20 years of experience as an editor and journalist covering technology. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
