Source text in English | Translation by Jim Jones (#26816) |
Boom times are back in Silicon Valley. Office parks along Highway 101 are once again adorned with the insignia of hopeful start-ups. Rents are soaring, as is the demand for fancy vacation homes in resort towns like Lake Tahoe, a sign of fortunes being amassed. The Bay Area was the birthplace of the semiconductor industry and the computer and internet companies that have grown up in its wake. Its wizards provided many of the marvels that make the world feel futuristic, from touch-screen phones to the instantaneous searching of great libraries to the power to pilot a drone thousands of miles away. The revival in its business activity since 2010 suggests progress is motoring on. So it may come as a surprise that some in Silicon Valley think the place is stagnant, and that the rate of innovation has been slackening for decades. Peter Thiel, a founder of PayPal, and the first outside investor in Facebook, says that innovation in America is “somewhere between dire straits and dead”. Engineers in all sorts of areas share similar feelings of disappointment. And a small but growing group of economists reckon the economic impact of the innovations of today may pale in comparison with those of the past. [ … ] Across the board, innovations fueled by cheap processing power are taking off. Computers are beginning to understand natural language. People are controlling video games through body movement alone—a technology that may soon find application in much of the business world. Three-dimensional printing is capable of churning out an increasingly complex array of objects, and may soon move on to human tissues and other organic material. An innovation pessimist could dismiss this as “jam tomorrow”. But the idea that technology-led growth must either continue unabated or steadily decline, rather than ebbing and flowing, is at odds with history. Chad Syverson of the University of Chicago points out that productivity growth during the age of electrification was lumpy. Growth was slow during a period of important electrical innovations in the late 19th and early 20th centuries; then it surged. | 在硅谷, 回来了景气时间了。101高速路沿的办公园区再一次的装饰有充满希望的初创企业身份的形象。租金飞涨,太浩湖城镇高档度假屋的需求高扬, 积累的财富象征就是 。湾区是半导体行业以及随之发展的计算机和互联网公司的发源地。 硅谷的向导们提供了许多使整个世界的人有未来感的奇观,从触摸屏手机到即时搜索大型图书馆,再到离数千英里之外驾驶无人飞行器的能力。 自二〇一十年以来的业务活动的复苏表明其进步继续。 因此,令人惊讶的是,硅谷的一些人认为这个地方停滞不前。几十年来,创新速度一直在放缓。贝宝(PayPal)的一个创始人和Facebook的第一个外部投资者彼得•泰尔(Peter Thiel)说,美国的创新“处在严峻与僵局之间”。各个领域的工程师都有类似的失望感。一群小但继续增长的经济学家认为,与过去相比,当今创新的经济影响可能会轻。 … 通盘以便宜的处理能力所致的创新是起飞的了。计算机开始理解自然语言。 人会用身体的动作来控制视频游戏了,而这种技术很快会在许多商业领域有用。 三维打印能够制造越来越复杂的东东,并且很快到人体组织和其他有机材料上。 一个对创新的悲观主义者可以把这个主意看做只是“许而不予的好东西”。但是呢,技术为主导的增长必须增长或稳步下降而不沉浮的持续这个主意跟历史上的真相背道而驰。芝加哥大学的查德•赛弗森(Chad Syverson)指出在电气化时代生产力的增长是不稳定的。 在十九世纪末至二十世纪初重要的一个电气创新时期,增长缓慢, 然后飙升。 |