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Places Where the World's Tech Pools, Despite the Internet
Slatterz writes "A decade ago people were talking about the death of distance, and how the internet would make physical geography irrelevant. This has not come to pass; there are still places around the world that are hubs of technology just as there are for air travel, product manufacturing or natural resource exploitation. This list of the ten best IT centres of excellence includes some interesting trivia about Station X during the Second World War, why Romania is teeming with software developers, Silicon Valley, Fort Meade Maryland, and Zhongguancun in China, where Microsoft is building its Chinese headquarters."
But people still need to live in buildings.
I say follow the buildings.
Do these pools drain into the series of tubes that makes up the internet?
I could see why countries were internet access isn't common but technology is at a reasonible level would require lots of programmers. language barreries would be the other reason - no off the self versions of software in your native language.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
They include Seattle as an honorable mention due to Microsoft, but it's silly to pretend they're the only software company in the area. Amazon, Nintendo of America, and Valve are all headquartered there. Also, Google has a sizeable development center in the Seattle area (it's where they develop GTalk, among other things).
And, most importantly, icanhascheezburger.com is based in the Seattle area.
Seriously Slashdot, can you please replace the fscking ridiculous comment "slider" on the left side of the screen? It totally sucks. Hire a proper UI designer.
Silicon Valley is special to me because of its cultural diversity. In one medium sized company you can work shoulder to shoulder with people from every major world ethnic group and every major world religion (including no religion). They work together, peacefully, to make better lives for themselves and their children. Look around the rest of the world. This place is unique and special. I see lots of other places around the world where folks insist on segregating themselves by ethnicity and/or religion. They must hate my home, Silicon Valley.
Peace.
It's a part of Haidian district in Beijing. As an expat living there, my friends and I used to take day trips ($6 for a 45-minute cab ride) down there to buy cheap computer parts at enormous (and always packed) indoor markets.
Anyone spot the the city missing from the list? Dublin?!
"I do not hack....... Wine."
Network infrastructure of choice: 10base5 Thicknet.
Sorry.
You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC
All of the VA/MD area around Washington is a big center for computers/IT. NIST is in Gaithersburg, MD and DARPA in Virginia Square, VA, as well as several universities (e.g., UMD, JHU) that are doing interesting research in human language technology - a big area of interest for the military and intelligence communities. Lots of major corporations have facilities in the area, too - IBM, SRI, and BBN to name a few.
Ft Meade, seriously? I mean, NSA and all, but come on. I think whoever wrote the summary has never been to Ft Meade. I don't think DISA relocating there quite qualifies it as a "tech pool". If you were to say the DC Metro area, then yes, I would agree with that, particularly with all the defense contracting/DOD/IC elements in the area.
it is the kind of place that inspires people with money to take a punt at a seemingly dumb idea.
Remember that: inspire people with money.
I don't think we can overlook the fact that tech pools in parent's basements all around the world. Spooky!
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
The list:
10. Boston
9. Romania
8. Fort Meade, Maryland
7. Finland
6. Zhongguancun, China
5. San Fransisco
4. Japan
3. Bangalore
2. Taiwan
1. Silicon Valley
My basement. There's no bigger pool anywhere.
I run a relocation biz in Chile. Chile is one of the most wired countries in South America.
Quality of life trumps connection in my experience.
I have a large pool of clients that are serious IT people that left the rest of the crazy world. They simple would prefer an o.k. connection, and a safe stable quiet place to work and for their families to live.
There is very little going on inside Chile as far as the IT industry is concerned, but it is a nice place to work compared to the rest of the World. They are progressively moving in bigger numbers for the lifestyle, not the connection.
Living in Chile
I could see why countries were internet access isn't common but technology is at a reasonible level ...
is this why Romania is also the global center for Excellence for carrier pigeon breeders?
Mongrel News all the news that fits and froths
Richard Florida (an economics prof.) wondered why his home town didn't keep the geeks that graduated from his school. They would graduate and then move elsewhere. Hi-tech companies couldn't get employees in spite of the fact that they graduated within five miles of the company.
What Florida discovered was that geeks want to live in certain places and not others. He wrote lots of papers and finally produced a popular book, 'The Rise of the Creative Class'.
He pointed out how Silicon Valley was able to flourish in spite of the fact that Boston was established in the hi-tech game. In Boston, employers can block employees from taking their knowledge to competing companies. In California, they can't.
Lots of things determine whether geeks will gather in a particular place. The place I would look for the next hi-tech paradise is southern Ontario. It has all the characteristics Florida found that attract geeks and hi-tech companies.
The internet concentrated the jobs instead of spreading them out. Now if you're not geographically in Silicon Valley, your job can be done in Taiwan, so all the job seekers come to Silicon Valley. In the old days, you could have gotten a job in Nebraska. Not anymore. No-one even knows what Nebraska is anymore.
Far more, I think, is down to the character of the Finns. After being robbed, raped and pillaged by almost every country in Europe the Finns are very independent.
That isn't even wrong. But if the writer prefers to reason Finland's IT success with certain mental characteristics ... well writer would do it better by trying to explain it with "boneheadism" and I am joking less than you think.
The list seems to mix up categories. Some listed are cities or states, but some are entire countries. Where in Finland, Japan, Taiwan, or Romania, exactly?
...in putting "Microsoft headquarters" and "centres of excellence" in the same paragraph.
you had me at #!
They're for sure missing the "telecom corridor" in the DFW area (hello, TI, inventor of the silicon transistor!) and "research triangle" in North Carolina.
I am d3matt
We may be stealthy, but an enormous amount of tech comes out of the Chicago area.
"To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
Lots of places would like to be a high-tech hub.
High tech is prestigious, brings high-paying jobs, has good health and safety and low (local) environmental impact.
Lots of places build out infrastructure (roads, office parks, networks, schools, housing) hoping to become a high-tech hub.
Some of these places succeed, some fail.
It turns out (can't recall the source, sorry) that one of the best predictors of where you will actually get a high-tech hub is the size of the local homosexual community.
Why?
Geeks and gays are both seeking the same kind of social tolerance.
So, I guess Cisco, IBM, GlaxoSmithKline, Bayer, Sony Ericson, NIH, EPA, NetApp, EMC, Red Hat and others don't count? And don't forget, as I've mentioned before, the Sanrio store...
Goofy, Geeky Gifts and More!
I can agree with many of the points made, but I need to point out a few others. I think the article focused too tightly on software and tech for tech sake. 1) Saying Microsoft is so overwhelming as to nullify the other technology players in Seattle is not correct. There is plenty of tech in Seattle that has nothing to with Microsoft PC based OSes or products (hello... aerospace anyone?) PC based software systems don't equal technology. 2) IT product companies can be notoriously cheap on spending. Business centers in turn can become places where actual use of the technology drives product requirements and innovation. That puts some very bright people making good money in New York, Tokoyo (not the whole of Japan), London, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, etc.. There are some tech folks in the business sector I would stack up against the best vendor engineers or university types out there. Notice most of the world's telecom isn't found in the cities on the list. It's more towards business. Wall Street and Main Street spends money.... Not just the list above. 3) While innovation is increasingly becoming much more a corporate thing (vs government and state education institutions), you have to give props to tech towns built around universities like Austin. You still go to specific universities if you want to research specific areas of science. I'm sure the diversity arguments still play here too. I thought Austin was a pretty big miss.
We could have teleporters and people would still want to live in the vicinity of other like minded people. It is just human nature. Probably the reason we've survived this chaotic evolutionary process.
One of the big reasons high-tech has been so successful in California is the provision in the California Labor Code that prohibits employers from owning what you do on your own time. No employment contract in California can override that. So you can do a startup while still employed.
Employers hate this, but it's one of the big reasons for Silicon Valley's success. It also boosts innovation in aerospace and Hollywood, both major California industries.
You can't expect a local police chief to enforce the law when he's being paid fifty times his government salary to look the other way.
What?
You know, the porn capital. Will spare you the obvious verbiage.
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
Given that "braska" is Swedish for frost, I'd hazard a guess that "Nebraska" is Swedish for "frosty piss". Consequently "Nebraska" is the phrase a Swedish slashdotter uses upon achieving first post. Am I right?
"The Rise of the Creative Class"
Others note the relatively cheap real estate
Silicon Valley and “cheap real estate”? Compared to what? The moon? San Francisco?
Have a nice time.
It's pretty hard to take this article seriously considering the number of glaring copy errors. If the authors couldn't be bothered to reread what they wrote, how much time did they put into researching and considering the list itself?
"Japan leads the world in robotics"
Hardly true. They lead the world in bipedal robots, but that's it!
I would actually argue that Pittsburgh leads the world in robotics. Which brings to mind, considering the huge influence that Pittsburgh has on IT, why isn't it listed?
It's like the old joke, "if you live in the desert, go where the water is". I think we as technology professionals should watch with interest the turmoil on Wall Street, another industry that saw people pooling together in set places. While I think that having Silicon Valleys IS a very important and critical starting place, I KNOW from firsthand experience that content creation happens all over for the people who do it. I code from maybe midnight to 7AM every day, like clockwork. I work this way because I like the quiet of working at night. I work alone more often than not, and I like that free design process. I USED to work in a cube in a technology center while I was learning to code, but I think that the future is in people getting out of the 'me too' Valley mentality, and into the self aware entrepenurial mentality. For me this is what it takes, but part of the process was moving to the mountains to avoid all the city life distractions.
Personally, I don't see how anything gets done in office buildings period. They're all so grey and structured. I think imagination is a prerequisite for invention, and that we stack the cards against ourselves by focusing on one or 2 holy grail areas for technology.
Remember, garages are everywhere (at least in America), and I think that this pooling effect is not only not necessarily a good thing, but it might be why computing breakthroughs are slowing down (despite the hype). The last real cycle of innovation ended in the late 90s, and I would say that I don't see much of it now either.
--chitlenz
Imagination is the silver lining of Intelligence.
There are places in the bay area that would be entirely unfazed by your rifle and NRA tee-shirt but you have to seek them out. But, considering the fact housing is dense enough that to safely and legally hunt deer you would have to drive 2 to 3 hours away, it's not too surprising you got the response you did. Drive that 2 or 3 hours and you will get the reception you want without looking for it. California is a big and diverse state. Generalizations about it usually usually indicate a lack of experience with it.
This list is on of those the reporter comes out in a bad day when he can't find something better to say.
As several people mentioned, this list is highly questionable.
I am a foreigner living in Sweden. Finland is mentioned in the article.
I know both places and can tell for sure that Sweden has a much more vibrant IT community than Finland. Finns come in here to study and Work. There are several IT companies in here. For example, Dice is located in Stockholm. Skype was started by a Swedish guy, both Ericsson and Sony Ericsson are in here. I could go on but you get the gist.
Luckily, this list is merely someone's opinion and therefore not worth a damn.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
San Francisco and.... uh.... um.... Los Gatos? Seriously. What's the other one? It sure as hell isn't the overgrown suburb San Jose. It doesn't even have a decent downtown, let alone an a real airport.
Garth Marenghi's Darkplace!
London, Hamburg, Kuala Lumpur, Singapore, Paris, Barcelona, Cape Town, heck, even Windhoek, etc.
And nowadays in big corporations everywhere you see the same thing. When I worked in Warsaw there were Indian, Chinese, English, German, Polish and of course yours truly (Mexican), in Kula Lumpur there were Malays (Muslim), Thai (Buddhist), Chinese, varied westerners, Iranians, Indian, all working happily without undue complications.
Your comment sounds terribly parochial to be frank, you guys in the US need to get out of your country a bit more.
Bar extremist regimes (Saudi Arabia, Iran, North Korea) where people are separated in purpose for religious, ethnic or ideological reasons, in most civilized places (normally democracies) you will see hot spots where peaceful coexistence is the norm.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
The GP was refering to people that hunt for fun. He said nothing about people that hunt for need or that use the kill for their own consumption.
As for the NRA it may be a legal organization in the US, but they are seen as nutcases in many places, and for many good reasons (their extreme views about gun ownership are ayathollic and confrontational, so it should be no surprise if some people find them disagreeable).
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
It is the British version of Silicon Valley (called Silicon Fen) , and is certainly much more prominent than Romania. ARM is probably the most famous of the Cambridge-based companies.
A picture is worth exactly 1024 words.
For years the whole bay area has been calling themselves "Northern" california," even though 60% of the state is further north, just because it doesn't want to be associated with SoCal.
Now SanFran doesn't want to be associated with Silicon Valley? Why, is it too close to L.A.?
Too funny.
(FWIW, I lived most of my life in SoCal and Silicon Valley until I moved to Boston when I was a 30something.)
DARPA is in Arlington, Virginia, one of the most diverse and well-educated counties in the country. (And the smallest self-governing county in the country.) Arlington County is also a leader in smart growth, planning, sustainable growth (or whatever you call it), with places like Tyson's Corner, Virginia, openly pointing to it as the inspiration for what they want to become.
Virginia Square is a neighborhood and a Metro stop, not a town.
I will simply say that article is a very interesting read. Skip the "honorable mentions", they just rattle off things we're all too familiar with. Skip right to the first (#10) and enjoy.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
Look, power houses are NEVER where branches are. They are where HEADQUARTERS are. Branches are always closed FIRST. Dublin was nothing but a set of branches. That is why places like China have worked hard to get branches there, THEN steal whatever tech it can and build new small businesses. These countries KNOW that information can and will be pulled from an area unless you have HQ.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
To really understand where technology pools, we need a follow-up article taking a critical look at where are the big dumping grounds for all the IT waste that is generated world-wide.
Where's the story about the real long term impact of the IT industry? Sure we know all about the tabloid glamor, but what about following up to find out where IT technology really "pools"?
People live where they have the means to live. This implies that we all live in a "centre of excellence" of some technology or other. A few hundred yards over my left shoulder sits the Steward Observatory Mirror Lab with huge rotating ovens for making the world's largest telescope optics. This makes Tucson fancy itself "Optics Valley" - at least, we'd undoubtedly appear on the top ten list for optics centers.
Someone has already mentioned Nebraska's claim as "Corn Valley". Think this is silly? Farming is a far more critical infrastructure than IT. What about biotechnologies in general? These will surely have as much to do with writing the history of the 21st century as IT.
Or generalize this to pure research - the fundamental engine of all technology. Obviously Boston would appear on that list, too, as well as the Bay area. L.A., or at least Pasadena, would jump into place. The original Cambridge and/or Oxford. A lot of IT centers would drop right off this list. Let the current recession linger a little too long and the IT centers buoyed up purely by commerce will collapse under the own weight. Those driven by basic innovation will survive just as the ivory towers did during the middle ages.
"... Pittsburgh Steelers bars are the visible cultural artifact of a kind of economic diaspora. People in those bars are the refugees who looked at high taxes, union dominance and lousy schools and voted with their feet. ..."
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123214881023691891.html
Of course the collapse of the steel industry has nothing to do with it. Got to love the WSJ, everything fits their orthodoxy.
I was surprised to see no mention of anywhere in Europe besides Finland and Romania. I've lived in Finland, and most of my friends were Nokia employees -- if Seattle got an honorable mention because it's overshadowed by Microsoft, then it should have been the same for Finland, which is dominated by Nokia. (Yes, Finland has excellent technology schools, and of course, Linus Torvalds, but that too isn't much different from Seattle.)
In France there's Sophia Antipolis, which is the "French Silicon Valley". HP, France Telecom/Orange, the European headquarters of the W3C, and the European Telecommunications Standards Institute are some of the big names here, then there's a plethora of IT consulting companies, called "SSII" in French, and several different technology schools and a university. Not sure how or why it was overlooked.