One of the reasons that I left Canada was that it become inevitable to me that Canada stopped caring (or never did) in growing strong technology and research base, but rather concentrated on remaining a resource driven economy. This worked fine for a while, until new, cheaper resources around the globe have been discovered. So, USA was giving a hope that it will retain its leadership as technological giant of the world to the end of times.
Well, 15 years of my living here uncovered some very scary truth doubting whether USA can keep educational and technological leadership. In my opinion, the most disturbing and alarming issues are:
There is no effort to improve general educational level of US society. 18% of illiteracy is mind boggling (e.g. Poland’s illiteracy is less than 1%).
The quality of education in elementary and high schools reached critical level.
The quality of education in non-technical colleges, or its non-transparency and bias towards leftism, instead of transparency, as well as the systematic destruction of free enterprise traditions have reached dangerous levels.
Although I fully support global economy concept, including supporting temporary negative impact of triggering massive job market loss because of changes in job market demand, I somehow don’t see enabling condition in the USA that the lost jobs will be replaced with new categories of jobs that Americans will be getting. For the entire 15 years there was a massive inflow of foreign workers educated with modern technologies (including myself but mainly from China and India). Unfortunately the trend remains the same, very high percentage of technologically advanced jobs are for a grab by foreigners, not Americans. I don’t know what it would take to reverse this trend, so more Americans would get highly paid technology jobs.
There is very high danger that USA will lose computer applications jobs. Globalization and big advancement of networking and service-oriented applications technology makes software development industry inexpensive and affordable to other countries. With good educational baseline, I think that China, South Korea, and India will outperform American software applications development. This definitely creates more opportunities for Poland’s high tech as well.
More and more people in the US started ringing alarm bells, heated discussions are on a rise, so is a polarization of the society.
Hopefully it is not too late.
Here is an excerpt from the article that triggered my commentary.
It would probably be useful to read this book:
This view also arises as the U.S. continues to lead the world in new tech directions, such as cloud computing. U.S. tech firms are building highly energy efficient data centers at shopping mall-sized scale to serve global customers.
Even India's rise as a technology center would not be possible without the U.S. India's big offshore companies continue to earn more than 50% of their revenue from North America. If it wasn't for Apple , China wouldn't be manufacturing iPhones and iPads .
The impact of U.S. innovation continues to be enormous and surprising, creating such technologies as social networking. Facebook and Twitter proved to be important tools in reshaping the Middle East.
So what's up with the World Economic Forum, which this week ranked Sweden as the number one country in its annual Global Information Technology Report? Did the report's authors mistake Ikea for IBM (IBM)?
The U.S. placed fifth for the second consecutive in the forum's annual report -- behind Singapore, Finland and Switzerland.
The report maintains that "there is no area on the globe that has an inherent advantage" in the digital economy. The rankings are based on those countries it believes are making the best use of new technologies and high-speed networks, while it measures PCs per population, mobile devices with data access, political environment, and so on.
The value of comparing the U.S. against four front-running countries with a combined population of 26.6 million (California has almost 37 million people) is probably an open question.
It would not be difficult to poke a stick at the World Economic Forum's tech rankings. But there's a growing body of evidence that says the U.S. is in decline or in danger of it. These reports and cogent opinions analyze R&D spending, education, the business climate and many other things, and they are increasingly influencing the debate in Washington.
Here's a look at some of it.
1. Rising Above the Gathering Storm, Rapidly Approaching Category 5 . This paper, originally published in 2005 and updated last year, was prepared for the presidents of the National Academy of Science, National Academy of Engineering and the Institute of Medicine.
In the five years since the original report, its authors concluded that "the nation's outlook has worsened." It cited problems in education, particularly in math and science, and federal spending. It's filled with observations, such as: "Of Wal-Mart's (WMT) 6,000 suppliers, 5,000 are in China," and "Only four of the top ten companies receiving United States patents last year (2009) were United States companies."
2. Unlike many in government positions, the DOE secretary doesn't speak from the safety of rigidly prepared text. But a richly illustrated presentation he prepared for a talk last fall at the National Press Club outlined his concerns about America's tech decline, particularly in manufacturing. It makes numerous comparisons to China, including a quote from Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao in 2009: "We will make China a country of innovation."
3. The Atlantic Century: Benchmarking EU and U.S. Innovation and Competitiveness . This report by the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation found that of the 40 countries that were compared to the U.S, all of them made faster progress toward a knowledge-based economy than the U.S. The report ranked China first.
"It is a quite serious problem," said Robert Atkinson, of the ITIF, in an interview, "because if we can't compete on the innovation side and the technology side anymore then what do we have left?"
4. in a provocative essay in Businessweek last year, Andy Grove: How America Can Create Jobs , the former chairman and CEO of Intel challenged the idea that the U.S. could thrive as its ships jobs overseas.
Wrote Grove: "You could say, as many do, that shipping jobs overseas is no big deal because the high-value work -- and much of the profits -- remain in the U.S. That may well be so. But what kind of a society are we going to have if it consists of highly paid people doing high-value-added work -- and masses of unemployed?"
5. A Pew Charitable Trust report last year pointed out that U.S. investment in clean energy was lagging. Clean energy is an industry the government has cited as important to future growth.
"The United States is on the verge of losing its leadership position in installed renewable energy capacity, with China surging in the last several years to a virtual tie," according to the report Who's Winning the Clean Energy Race?
6. The World Economic Forum's Global Competitiveness Report 2010-11 examines what it calls the "12 pillars of competitiveness" among nations. The report lowers the U.S. ranking by two places, to fourth, with the U.S. trailing behind Switzerland, Sweden and Singapore. China moved up two notches, to 27 from 29. The U.S. still has a commanding lead but the forum's sees "escalating weakness" in the U.S. economy, namely from its fiscal deficits.
1 komentarz:
I completely agree that the US is dump when it comes to the educational system. I would never raise a child in this country. I am almost considering learning Finish as they have one of the best educational systems in the world.
In terms of our technology in the states, there is definitely action towards creating the next new beneficial thing, though nobody is sharing information as to be the "first" to present the next wonder. Things would be much quicker to fruition if we could work together without our selfish backbones.
As for the whole immigrants receiving the better jobs, I absolutely agree.. at least in the tech world. I guess you should go to your next interview wearing some wooden shoes and a Russian Ushanka to get a job in Silicone Valley.
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