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US No Longer Technology King
An anonymous reader writes to tell us that according to a recent report from the World Economic Forum the US has lost the leading spot for technology innovation. The new reigning champ is now apparently Denmark with other Nordic neighbors Sweden, Finland and Norway all claiming top spots as well. "Countries were judged on technological advancements in general business, the infrastructure available and the extent to which government policy creates a framework necessary for economic development and increased competitiveness."
It appears it's mostly based on that... but then we all know this country sucks there in regards to Europe and Asia. As soon as the FCC stops sucking up to the big telecom corps and opens up the spectrum, the game is on again.
Web2.0: I love when people Flickr my cuil and digg my boingboing until my google is reddit and I start to yahoo
Since the eighties, when Japan began to take over U.S. role on technology, and U.S. started to focus more on services, this was something predictable. Sometimes people forget that there is no way to be prosper doing each others laundry
When a society decides that corporations are priviledged citizens, corporations decide that profit and Tax Evasion matter more than Education, how can the country NOT fall behind in technology?
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
In some respects that's not too far from the truth, but at the rate we're losing those freedoms I figure they'll eventually stop hating us.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
One small think they left off -- marginal tax rates. High rates like Sweden positively drive innovators away.
If anybody doubts that we have lost our edge in the technology arena let me ask you one question:
Name one complete sub-assembly inside of your computer which had the majority of the R&D and Fabrication done in the USA.
Of that sub-assembly (assuming you have named one), which components are utilizing NEW technology developed here in the USA.
I would like to know why the USA (given a dedicated effort) could not take back the crown of technology power house without doing so by stifling our competition over seas.
There has to be enough room in the future technology development for us to foster and train our citizens to come up with new concepts which will not rely on foreign brains, labor, or money to develop, market, and sell.
Until the US fixes its priorities we're going to continue to fall. Perhaps the US can keep buying talent from other nations, with H1-B visas, but unless the scientists are given fruitful environments they simply aren't going to come up with anything new or revolutionary. What encouragement do the nation's thinkers have to keep improving their ideas when the laurels and rewards are going only to the people who manage them like a column of assets? It's plain demoralizing to continually refine a product for a year only to see executive support lost and funding slashed. Graduate students and post-docs, while they provide a significant source of intellectual labor, cannot compete with happy and eager experienced scientists in other parts of the world.
Extreme levels of government regulation, oversight, interaction, and micromanaging are probably a significant contributor to the death of American technological innovation as well.
the NPG electrode was replaced with carbon blac
The first thing I would critique about this (amongst many others) is that it is a ranked list. At least in the BBC summary, it doesn't describe the objective rankings of the countries.
For example, if it was on a 100 point scale, the US could have slipped from, say, 99.9 to 99.8, and that would have been enough to slip from first to seventh. Or maybe the objective score would have been a much larger slide. Maybe the US objectively climbed, but just not at the same rate as the other countries. Being that all ten of the top countries have the same mature technological apparatus, I am imagining that whatever shuffling took place in the ratings was rather minor. The actual differences between technology adaption between the US and Iceland might be almost indistinguishable.
Hopefully I didn't put any [] around my words.
... the extent to which government policy ...
This isn't about technology, it's about politics. This is a damning of Bush, not of the American scientific and tech communities.
Ho-hum, it gets so tiresome. Wah wah America we hate you, you suck..... (can we have some more money?)
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Isn't it a global marketplace now? Who cares what 'your country' is doing. Just be the best you can be in your field and you'll be fine. Life will go on even if you can't wave a big flag saying your country is better than somebody else's. Be proud of what *you* can do.
I live in the Sillicon Valley and we use to be the big Tech center, after the Dot Com burst people began shunning Technology based companys. Now the big focus in the area seams to be BioTech companys. They are quickly out pacing the IT companys in the area. But thanks to short sighted politicians there are to many bans and restrictions in this country on this type of technology.
Something like only 20% of the availble stock of Stem Cells are still viable but the government makes it illegal to harvest more. Maybe I missed something, but every article I have seen on the process seams to make it appear no life is destroyed getting the stem cells. Its simply the old Science vs. Religion debate and the Religious Zeolots are winning and running the country into a sad deluded existance.
You might have a machine that solves any problem you give it, but if nobody has access to it, it may as well not be there.
(IANAL)
Like software, Education and Immigration should be free and open. Providing innovation a fertile breeding ground.
I think that the cost of Education in the US has a big impact on this too. Sadly, a college degree has become a status symbol in the US for "upper class" citizens. A lot of people can't afford a student loan that is sometimes more than their mortgage!
A lot of European countries offer good incentives for people to study, including paying a state allowance for university students.
I'm not up to date on European immigration policy, but I'm sure it would be much more relaxed than the US when it comes to skilled labor. I couldn't imagine it being any more tighter.
Well, that's my 2 cents worth anyways...
Maybe Iran testing nuclear weapons? Just a thought, who knows...
Oh yeah, we're all real jealous of your freedom.
Freedom to be ruled by a religious nutcase.
Freedom to become homeless if you lose your job.
Freedom to watch "fair and unbiased" Republican propaganda on the Fox Network.
Freedom to die in a pointless war (that's Iraq, if you didn't get it).
Freedom to choke on the fumes of your SUV.
and, of course, the hatred has nothing to do with the fact that the US seems to take pleasure in invading countries once in a while, just so politicians can say the words "kick ass", and they can sell some more weapons.
</rant>
damn... I took the flamebait.... who needs karma, anyway?
While US companies are judged solely on profit, this trend will continue because it is the most lucrative way to bring something to market.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Dark fiber isn't useful for pushing out broadband. The dark fiber is just extra fiber that was run alongside lit fiber (because the incremental cost is very low) when they were installing the backbones. If the backbone owners find that they need more bandwidth, they'll use that dark fiber. There's no lack of bandwidth on the backbones; it's with the "last mile" connections to homes and businesses, which requires some type of new infrastructure to be installed.
'What country has landed on the moon?'
38 years ago.
'What country invented the transistor, and later the microchip?'
Over 50 years ago.
'What country harnessed electricity, and set up the first electric lights?'
You'd be surprised. But that was over 120 years ago.
'What country set up the first assembly line, and mass produced the automobile?'
Again, 100 years ago.
'What country split the atom?'
63 years ago.
Now.
Which of the wealthy industrialized countries has the highest percentage of poor?
Which has least progressive taxation, ie rich pay higher percentage, indeed, pay taxes at all.
Which has lowest average wages.
Which has declining participation in the wealth generated by labor.
Which has worst ratio superrich to general population.
Which has giant trade imbalance.
Which has largest debt.
Which has biggest tax breaks for wealthiest people.
Which has collapsing real estate market.
Which has no manufacturing capacity for its own markets.
Which has worst schools.
Which has largest percentage of permanent poor.
Which has poorest representation of science in government.
Which has most money wasted on military and spy networks.
Which has religious belief that markets cure anything.
Which lost a major city and told its people to go to hell for being poor and stupid.
Which has the highest per capita spending on health care with the worst per capita coverage. Add: Which has businesses taking 30 percent or more of the health care expenditures as admin costs and profit.
Which has worst sex education, teen pregnancy rate and STD infection rate.
Which has worst newborn death rate.
Which has collapsing science funding.
Which has had science infiltrated by the operatives of a political party.
Which has a population so uneducated and unimaginative that they only finished 1/4 of a space station and forgot to build a shuttle to get to it. And can't understand why that would matter.
Which economy is about to explode, sinking belly up?
Which nation is exceedingly wealthy and well educated because they nationalized their oil fields, keeping all the profits? That would be Norway.
Which countries tax high, have excellent labor representation in business decisions, has excellent health care at reasonable cost, low poverty rates, lowest teen birth rates and STD infection rates, and now lead the world in tech development? Why, the Netherlands, Sweden, Norway and all the other countries mentioned.
Apparently the people of a nation taking control of their futures through their representative governments do better than those who abdicate their control to be ruled by corporate business. Who would have thought it.
One thing i think that has been overlooked in this discussion is the number of amazing institutions. If you compare the number of elite research institutions in the United States to anywhere else the US does extremely well. While this is certainly only one factor in a nations "technology ranking" the amount of research these universities generate and the highly educated people they churn out is undeniable a huge positive force for the US.
It doesn't have shitstain to do with technological.
What we have in the USA is institutionalized beauracry running everything. It doesn't have anything to do with sceince or scientists or religion or anything like that. That's a red herring.
WE have Unions choking the profitability out of the people that employ them. They are paid to sit on their ass and if they don't get what they want they go on strike instead of getting a different job. They are litigating their ways out of a job. If it's not profitable to hire workers then workers don't get hired.
We have mega corporations running by paperwork alone were innovation and creativity have no outlet. They are run by people whose job it is to make sure nothing bad happesna and to hold the status quo. They do not have any competition and are institutionalised by government protections and government subsidies. They DON'T WANT INNOVATION BECAUSE INNOVATION WILL PUT THEM OUT OF A JOB.
We have a media that is obsessed with their own little political agendas. They are news people are paid to sell movies and TV shows. And as a end result you have dipshit rappers, druggies, and basketball stars who couldn't get a GED or graduate vocational school on their own are making millions of dollars and are held up as artists and celebreties. You have braindead morons like Britney spears or Paris Hilton as people of some consiquence or singificance when in reality they have could easily be replaced by a anatomically correct mannequines AND NOBODY WOULD BE ABLE TO TELL THE DIFFERENCE.
No science is ever promoted. Nothing remarkable is ever proprosed to the public.
You have a patent system out of control.
Software patents are destroying innovation in the industry. On a DAILY basis you have literally HUNDREDS of software patents. This doesn't make any fucking sense. Meanwhile countries without software patents are eating American's company's lunch.
And it's only going to get worse.
People are taught that creativity is just being different for different sake. That somehow the type of haircut they have or how they dress is more important to them then their personality.
That the type of car you own matters. That if your pretty it will make a bigger difference to your life then if your smart.
That getting rich is lucky, that it's more like the lotto. That your desire to get something entitles you to getting it right now irregardless of the debt you aquire. That people are defined by what sort of stores they buy or coffee they drink.
Double latte, fat-free cream please makes you a better person, makes you healthier then somebody that drinks instant.
That hard work is pointless. WE are taught that it's pointless to give a shit aobut how things work. That if things are difficult they aren't worth doing. That easier is better and the less you know to get by the more time you have to have fun.
That feeling bad about something or protesting against something bad makes you a better person then somebody who doesn't do that. (hint: it doesn't).
That nerds only give a shit about stuff works. That Mechanics are low class. Engineering is something hire somebody else to do.
That the color of the walls in your house is important.
Complete BULLSHIT.
All of it.
This is what our culture is turning into. Completely vacent. Totally self-centered, youth obsessed. Shallow bullshit.
It used to be if you were a scientist you were a fucking hero. A Doctor, Scientist, Researcher. These people _mattered_. You were a complete asset to the USA. Top of the line individuals.
You were like kings. People looked up to you. People worked their asses off to get to be a scientist.
Now nobody gives a shit. Remember that hardwork is pointless.
Nowadays the best thing that you can do with your life is to get rich as 25 making a fancy website and retire to a life of leasure and trivia. Football stars are the most important to our culture now.
The problem is fucking society is turning to shit.
Well an issue is what makes something American. If Intel manufacturers and design all their chips outside of the US, are they still an American company even if the HQ is in the US? Now this is not the case at the moment. But just food for thought, because a lot of research by these companies are not done in the US. E.g. whole lines of microprocessors by intel were developed in Israel. A lot of research centers exist in China and India. And what are the American universities best in? Educating or doing research? As far as I know the rankings are usually based on research. A number of universities in the US today are being blamed for neglecting education in favor of research.
Does giving food and shelter to a homeless count as "meeting every need"? I don't expect government to brush my teeth. But I sure expect it to keep law and order, build roads, and fulfill a number of other important needs of a country. If the US is so free, why is every drug illegal even soft drugs? Isn't it peoples own problem if they screw themselves up? Why should government tell me how to live my life? Why is prostitution mostly illegal? Isn't sex between two consenting adults a private matter and not a matter for the government? Mind you I wouldn't do any. But I don't see why it should be the business of government to interfere with if anybody else wish to do so. With social freedom it simply seems to be a lot of limits in the US. Another example, why can't you consume alcohol when 21? If I drink alcohol on my own property under 21 why should that be any of the governments business?
Yea, all the whiney stuff about losing our tech edge... really man, get over it. How about something that really counts, like high scores on Grand Theft Auto? We rule dude. When it comes to whacking cops and hos and stealin stuff, we are like so totally NUMBER ONE! We are the numero uno video game nation! The USA is also top of the heap in pizza, and drinks with cool names like "cocaine", and shopping malls. And stuff like SUVs and MP3 players. You Euro-smack talkers ever look and see where your iPod comes from? Silicone valley usa, dude. And where do you think Star Wars came from? France? Sheesh. They're not even allowed to use cameras anymore. Where else can you see American Idle or a Billy Ray Cirrhosis show? Huh? Not London hon. No way. Cause we are just too bitchin.
The Russians have won. They have made the world a cesspool of distrust, greed, fear and hate.
We now have a President who is "Born Again", and recognizes Christ as his personal saviour. His old Attorney General, John Ashcroft, a devout Assemblies of God member, used to anoint himself with oil. We have many members of Congress, both in the Senate and the House, who are ordained ministers in their churches. Some are LDS Bishops. I would venture to say that the percentage of devout Christians holding office in various levels of government in the US exceeds that of the general population. Which oath do they hold to? Their duty to country, or to a church?
You've got people who firmly believe that the US Constitution states that the USA is a Christian nation. I've got in-laws who used to believe that I was damned to Hell because I was raised Catholic and not a member of the Church of Christ.
We have a member of the Texas House who firmly believes that the Earth is the center of the Universe, and that we never landed a man on the moon, and that satellites are held in orbit by magnetism, not gravity - because Newton's Laws are wrong and he can prove it. http://www.fixedearth.com/geosynchronous_sa.htm (I had to post that link because it's a hoot. His proof is that a LaGrange point is where gravity stops because it's where it balances out. Give the man a Nobel!)
We had an Army General (2 star?) who fervently believed we would win in Iraq because his God is greater than their God, Allah. Someone forgot to tell him they're one and the same. Jehovah, too.
These are the people who've been running this nation for the last dozen years or so. Their's are the people who backed a "Crusade" in the Middle East, thinking we'd set them "free".
Oh. And that CUNY study? Does it take into account that many black Southern Baptists are becoming Muslims? And the biggest immigrant groups in the US today are Hispanic Catholics (and Protestants) and Muslims from the Middle East and SE Asia?
Just because the percentage of people identifying themselves as Christians has gone down (how accurate is that study) does not mean that the number of people who identify themselves as religious has gone down. Or that the percentage who identify themselves as Born Again has gone down.
I don't need to cite references. All you need to do is get out of your ivory tower (sorry, that actually sounds religious!) and look around. Wake up. You're missing an entire country out there!
"A little misunderstanding? Galileo and the Pope had a little misunderstanding."
For example, take Coke: Coke consists of water, a couple of cents of sugar (bad-for you stuff), caramel, caffiene, CO2 many of which are toxins. How do they make people drink the stuff? By advertising and marketing and creating an image.
Um, no. This isn't correct at all. People drink Coke for the same reason they eat too many Twinkies or doughnuts: it tastes good. It's as simple as that. If it tasted like crap, people wouldn't drink it. They might try it once because of some advertising, but people don't usually continue to eat or drink stuff that doesn't taste good, unless it gives them a drugged sensation (e.g., alcohol).
If you made an argument that people drank Coke rather than a competing cola drink because of advertising and marketing, you'd have a much better argument, but I'd counter with the argument that people choose a drink they think tastes better, and that different colas (branded or generic) have very different tastes. Pepsi, for instance, is much sweeter tasting than Coke.
As for toxins, I don't think there's anything in Coke that's a toxin. Caffeine is not a toxin; it's a drug. Just because something's not entirely healthy doesn't mean it's an outright poison. Caramel is just cooked sucrose, sugar isn't bad for you per se (it's the quantity versus your energy expenditure that's important), and CO2 is downright inert.
ipods are much the same really. They are a result of extremely good marketing (and I include ergonomics in marketing).
This is quite fallacious in my opinion. Ergonomics is not an element of marketing, it's an element of design, and actually falls under human factors engineering (part of industrial engineering in most schools). I don't think human factors engineers would appreciate being called marketers.
Human factors is what makes a product usable. If something's hard to use, it's simply not as functional as something that's easy to use. Suppose you had a race car with a crappy seat with no side support, no lumbar support, and in general very uncomfortable. The driver of that race car wouldn't perform very well compared to drivers in cars with well-designed seats, and the team would lose the race. There's no marketing there; it's performance, and it's human factors.
They are not particularly good in terms of sound quality and break often (a huge number of in wanrantee failures).
Most people don't have hearing good enough to discern minor differences in sound quality (especially with earbud headphones usually used for portability), and how often they fail is only relevant insofar as how the competition compares. I imagine most MP3 players (esp. hard drive ones) have a lot of failures because of their complexity and portability. Cellphones aren't known for their ruggedness either.
Sure, branding within an economy adds very little value within that economy. If a Coke costs $1 or $5 does not really matter within the USA. But on a global basis, branding is increasingly becoming a huge USA export earner. A Coke sold in Australia, for instance, which is made and bottled in Australia results in some money going back to Coke USA.
For this example, it's pretty simple, and I discussed it above. It's about taste. Coke made and bottled in Australia isn't just some generic cola with a Coke label slapped on; it's the super-secret Coke formula made to their specifications, so that it's the same product as what you buy in the USA. People apparently like the taste, so they buy it.
Anyway, back to the original point, as you say, ipod is made in the same factory as the technically equivalent YinYangMP3. So why would you spend $200 for the ipod and not spend $100 for the equivalent YinYang? Because of the branding.
No, at least in this example, it's because the YinYang is not the same product as the iPod. The YY has some buttons instead of a scroll wheel, has a different user interface, and doesn't work with iTunes (not that I'm a fan of iTunes, but many people are
I think this on should be marked 'Informative' -- it illustrates the American Way. As an American, I completely understand this. What's bad, is where assholes take this kind of attitude. With guns.
Zhrodague.net - I do projects and stuff too.
Whoa, whoa. You were doing ok until here, where you slip up. It is perfectly reasonable to assume, given the existence of early Buddhists, that there was a Buddha. Was he in fact in possession of all of the traits they attributed to him? Probably not, from a skeptical outlook - most likely, he was just a very smart, insightful and charismatic individual. Likewise Jesus. The scant evidence does not prove he exists, but the simplest explanation is that such a person - not necessarily a divine one - did, in fact, exist. Don't mix up the existence of the supernatural Christ with a human Jesus. Don't compare the existence of the human Jesus to the existence of Xenu, these are completely different issues.
Scientology - there was a Ron L. Hubbard. Mormonism - there was a Joseph Smith. Religious movements nearly always start with a powerful leader figure. As skeptics, we would view those people as ('merely') exceptional human beings, not divine or supernatural as the adherents of those faiths would. But let's not deny the likely existence of the individual itself.
No. Let's retarget your comment, and see what happens:
You are conflating characters in a story with the authors of a story. There is no such relationship that automatically arises; that is only the case when the story is a history, and my entire point is that there is no evidence that confirms the bible's role in telling about Jesus as a historical one. Jesus did not write the bible (or anything else, even according to the bible.) The only conclusion you can draw from Jesus' presence in the stories in the bible is that since these are claimed to be tellings of history, then the reasonable thing to do is go searching elsewhere in history to get confirmation. That confirmation has, to date, not been forthcoming. This leaves the status of the bible as history unconfirmed. No matter how you want to cast Christ's role - human, hybrid, divine, alien - all you have to go on is what the bible says, simply because that's all we've found. The fact that the bible says something is not enough to come to the conclusion that said something represents a factual retelling of history. There are many books, many claims of divine and supernaturally powerful figures, many claims of humans who figure in those stories. This is the actual situation from which you pull your assertion that it is reasonable to presume there was a Christ.
People make up stories. You simply have to factor that in.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
True, but if Paul (or whoever) invented the son of God bit, and the miracles bit, and the resurrection bit, then inventing the actual person seems trivial. If I tell you that I took my penknife and chopped down 4 trees, whittled them into a huge ladder, and climbed up to the clouds to take a ride, I doubt it's wise to assume that I really did have a penknife just because that part of my story is plausible.
I live in a small house in a suburb of Stockholm. I have a fibre in to my livingroom, with internet, cable and telephone. Me and my neighbours paid for the local net, we hooked up to the county network and we buy access from local companies. 100 Mb internet is 200 SEK/ month. We can deduct part of the cost from tax. It is subsidized, through tax and county net, and it is possible, in US as well. On the countryside it is different even here, as houses are very separated. I would not say the problems in US is very different than here, it is more that they trying to solve it without subsidies.
From the article:
That comment says it all right there. This has nothing to do with technology innovation and everything to do with the members of the World Economic Forum and their collective opinion of the current US administration.