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Former Cisco CEO: China, India, UK Will Lead US In Tech Race Without Action
Mickeycaskill writes: Former Cisco CEO John Chambers says the US is the only major country without a proper digital agenda and laments the fact none of the prospective candidates for the US Presidential Election have made it an issue. Chambers said China, India, the UK and France were among those to recognize the benefits of the trend but the US had been slow — risking any economic gains and support for startups. "This is the first time that our government has not led a technology transition," he said. "Our government has been remarkably slow. We are the last major developed country in the world without a digital agenda. I think every major country has this as one of their top two priorities and we don't. We won't get GDP increase and we won't be as competitive with our startups. The real surprise to me was how governments around the world, except ours, moved."
that "digital agenda" means free corporate welfare from the government to pay Cisco to do what Cisco ought to be doing on its own: Make networking gear that people want to buy.
Those are the only 2 places where the money is going to come from.
The Gov, though primarly from a specific party... wants to cut as much from Gov spending as possible. Stoke the 'Tech Race' on the Govs dime? What planet are you from?
The Corps? They're hoarding record profits. What philanthropic bone do they have that they would benefit from this? Perhaps if it provided them tax breaks, but beyond that, the majority would scoff at the idea. And the Tech leaders? As long as they can get more people using their brand, sure, they'll throw a learning conference.
So where does that leave the rest of us? Sitting on the sidelines, arguing over technological stagnation, while fueling an imagninary ego, because we 'educate' the 'best' in the world.
What a bunch of nonsense. The US has by far the most developed ecosystem for tech startups, the source of real innovation, not fossils like Cisco. That there is no "digital act" in place does not mean the US is falling behind anything. I gather that was targeted for the UK to catch nationalist non-sense, but those people tend to forget who is the country that created the internet in the first place, where Google, Facebook, Apple and Microsoft are based and in general, where most of the new cool stuff keeps getting created, from Uber to Tesla. So good luck with that envy.
Because it seems the US likes technology plenty. The US is a bastion of high tech research and production. Intel, AMD, nVidia, Texas Instruments, Analog Devices, Broadcom, IBM, most of the big names in chip technology are US companies with US R&D centers, and many of them have a lot of US production. That's just one example, you can point to plenty of other technologies that the US does a ton in, it is just a good one since those chips tend to underlie our digital devices these days.
Same deal on the purely digital side of things, namely software. The US is a mainstay in virtually every segment of software.
So what is this "digital agenda" that the US so desperately supposedly needs to not fall behind? Because they seem to be doing well.
Also as an aside, what's wrong with being #2 or #3 in something? I've visited a number of other countries, and by definition not all of them are #1 at most things. They are still very nice places to live and I have no issues. Seems that between #1 and "stone age shithole" there is a whole range of "quite nice places to live". So who cares if China is #1 at something?
Overall, the US "style" is to let the marketplace set the pace and direction of change rather than government initiatives to "guide" the market. Whether that's good or bad is a long and complex topic.
If the other industrial nations actually start to clearly kick our butt using government initiatives, then voters may change their usual preference.
Besides, we have our bloated military as the govt's techie playground. It's our version of socialistic R&D, one even Republicans like.
Table-ized A.I.
All the old fossils still wasting space in congress have no idea how to function in the modern age
Do you really think that China, India and the UK don't have their own old fossils still in power?
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
The US can't have any policy agenda on anything. The Wrong People might benefit. Depending on your perspective, The Wrong People have the bad gender, or the bad skin color, or they're too rich, or they're from the bad country, or the bad states, or they have the bad religion, or the bad politics, or the bad associations, or the bad hobbies. Or they're insensitive to people who deserve special consideration. Or someone might make a profit. Or someone might pay less in taxes. Or someone might not get set-asides. Wages might not meet "living wage" standards. An animal might get hurt or stressed out. Someone might spend Too Much on advertising and marketing. Or everyone might not benefit from it equally. Or it might not save the planet fast enough. That's why we can't do it.
The implication of the article is that government is better at figuring out where to go digitally than business. If you've ever been in a government office...say, a post office, tag agency, courthouse, whatever, you'll see just how up-to-date and visionary the government is when it comes to technology. This is not unique to the United States. Why would we want to hobble ourselves by having the government set the pace for our digital future?
And Russia will lead the world in railroad shipping in the mid 20th century unless we something NOW (int the early 1900s) to lay down as much railroad infrastructure as we can. It doesn't matter than we must produce a 2nd class of citizens living in indentured servitude as they lay down these rails along our West Coast. They are just Chinamen. We need to realize the urgency of creating this essential infrastructure or we'll be overwhelmed from the west. Oh, wait, duh. Wrong century. I mean Internet... not railroad... oh, and those garlic eating Eastern Europeans and the curry-smelling Indians... THEY must be made into an indentured servant class to protect our vital national interests. Hmm... so how do we create indentured servitude without calling it "indentured servitude"?
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
"Former Cisco CEO John Chambers says the US is the only major country without a proper digital agenda "
That's simply plain wrong.
The USA has a well defined digital agenda it goes by, whatever the collateral problems this generates.
And this agenda is contained in a simple sentence :
"We Try To Collect Everything And Hang On To It Forever"
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
aaaaaaa
I wonder what's Cisco's digital agenda for staying in the game after destroying its innovation capabilities in search of myopic profit-driven labor cost reductions... Blind replacements of U.S labor by that of the labor in the countries listed that are supposedly leading.. How's that working out?
Cisco : Partnerships/Acquisitions/Spin-ins and outs because we destroyed/laid-off/overlooked talent/innovation internally...
Article reads as : Chambers lamenting on the legacy he left behind : A once innovative company undone by myopic greed.
If only there was a labor/corporate agenda headed by the U.S govt. to save CEO's like John Chambers from themselves.... Oh' wait... John Chambers and CEOs like him lobbied and paid them to look the other way....
The US is so corrupt, companies are buying monopolies everywhere, so they don't have to compete.
Thank you, Bradley Manning, Edward Snowden and so many others, for courageously defending humanity, my freedom and more!
The government is pretty much run exclusively by feminists and tortoises nowadays, so are you somehow surprised?
Meh. What a worthless piece of writing. The article doesn't even specify what a "digital agenda" is or give examples, but I guess I can use my imagination. You wanna know why all those countries have digital agendas? It's because they feel like they are light-years behind the US (silicon valley that is to say) and it's their way of acting like they are doing something about it..."Hey! We have an agenda! We're doing something here! Innovate!". The great irony of course being that you can't legislate your way to innovation with a Maoist 5 year plan. Tech innovation in the US is obviously doing just fine without some BS government lip service agenda...and we already have enough fucking corporate welfare programs thank you very much.
Instead of exporting work to every hellhole in the world, perhaps one would do well to repeal all immigration laws enacted in the last 70 years.
That would go far in removing the distortionary forces that oppose citizens.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
ARM ring any bells?
O perhaps you're smart enough to use exponential to describe a situation where the rate of change of something is proportional to that thing, rather than treating it as the linguistic equivalent of parmesan cheese and balsamic vinegar.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Right now we have distracted ourselves with a non-functioning congress and infighting over too many other things. Also, as a whole, we spent more time spending too much money outside our own budgetary means. There isn't much money left to create a "digital agenda" these days. Fix congress and balance the federal budget while paying back national debt and then I'll say we're ready to create a "digital agenda". The other side of this is that I was reading a post in here about the US being a "mainstay" in technology and large, traditional American technology companies were mentioned. That's fine but ignores the fact that what was being referred to in the article was about startups. If we fall behind on innovating and creating new technologies then we will fall behind. There is a lot of venture capital in the US at the moment. That is good but how do the policies of these other nations give them a leg up on creating and establishing new startups?
The US is going to give away all its jobs via H1B visas to Chinese and Indian citizens, who, thanks to people fearing immigration for anyone but poor Hispanics--give them citizenship for being here illegally but don't do anything for the mounds of educated international students--will be forced to return to their countries whether they like it or not. What do you think they are going to do with what they learned here?
The guy who is ran Cisco into the ground by off shoring and heavy H1B hiring is complaining about the US falling behind other countries? Really? Does he mean shareholder value? In my opinion this guy and others like him are a big part of the problem. If all the good jobs are being handed away because companies want to save money, then there is no incentive to pursue those jobs by folks who need to make a decent living in this economy. The only agenda he is speaking of is shareholder profits.
Watch your wallets. Beware of Chicken-hawk Republicans calling for action.
FTFY
Blame this on the ISPs that drag their feet on getting real data speeds to their customers. South Korea gets GIGABYTES to their customers at a price the US hasn't seen in years if ever. I'ts CHEAP!
We should pile all the Congressmen in a pile and set them on fire. Fossil Fuel.
Learn to love Alaska