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What will be the next great technological revolution?

Jan 10, 2010 by snps#21 | Posted in History

And don't say cleantech. That's not a revolution. It's simply a technological shift.

Anyway, here is what I mean.

During the late 1700's and early 1800's the revolution was in the form of the textiles industry.
In

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Ric Demers can’t remember how many pseudo–Silicon Valleys he has seen around the world while traveling for Advanced Micro Devices. The globe’s second-largest microchip designer and producer (after Intel), AMD was created 40 years ago in the authentic Silicon Valley in California. Demers, the firm’s chief technology officer, has no intention of moving. Across the world, he points out, private and public attempts to create new Silicon Valleys have achieved only “pale copies” of the original.

That original has remained the undisputed cradle of high-tech and communications innovation. Historic leaders like Hewlett-Packard and Intel have stayed here; more recent giants Google, Facebook, and Twitter cluster around the pioneers. The Valley’s economy, concentrated in a 60-mile corridor running from San Francisco to San Jose, attracts one-third of all venture capital invested in new businesses in the United States—39 percent in 2009, though the $7 billion made it a slow year. A new start-up launches every working day. From among these high-tech ventures will emerge the next Google or Intel.

Silicon Valley faces a serious threat, however: the fiscal and regulatory earthquakes rocking California, which verges on becoming a failed state. Measured by per-household state and local government spending, California ranks third-highest in the nation, behind Alaska and New York. The state government is trying desperately to squeeze money out of any profitable activity to meet the crippling costs. Further, California continues to impose onerous regulations on the private sector. High taxes and stifling regulations give companies a strong incentive to move elsewhere. In this increasingly business-hostile environment, will Silicon Valley’s unique entrepreneurial spirit survive?

orty years ago, when Silicon Valley began to expand and soon came to dominate the high-tech universe, most of its companies were manufacturing enterprises, producing microchips and computers right on the spot. No longer. Starting in the 1980s, Valley firms began moving away from production to concentrate on inventing new products and services. AMD, for example, outsourced most of its manufacturing years ago to factories in countries like China, India, and Taiwan—places with lower wages and high production quality. The approximately 3,000 employees at the company’s Sunnyvale offices are designers, marketers, accountants, and mechanical engineers; what tiny production lines remain are for building prototypes.

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