Source text in English | Translation by XIN CHEN (#26777) — Winner |
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. | 硅谷回归繁荣,雄心勃勃的初创公司再次挤满了101高速公路沿线的商业园。房租在飞涨;像太浩湖(Lake Tahoe)这样的度假胜地,高级度假屋的需求也在激增,这些都象征着财富的累积。半导体行业以及随之发展壮大的众多电脑和互联网公司都诞生于湾区。这里的优秀人才魔术般地创造了许多奇迹,让这个世界充满未来感,比如触屏手机,即时海量搜索,以及遥控千里之外的无人机技术。湾区自2010年以来的商业活力复苏表明,该地经济正在强劲地发展。 因此,有一种来自硅谷的论调会让有些人感到惊讶:这里死气沉沉,几十年来的创新速率都十分缓慢。PayPal的创始人之一以及Facebook的首位外部投资者皮特·斯尔(Peter Thiel)说,美国的创新处于极度的困境之中,几乎濒临消亡。来自各领域的工程师也都表达了类似的失望之情。有少数经济学家认为,当今的创新对经济带来的影响与过去相比相形见绌,但持这种观点的人数正在增加。 总体上看,由低廉的处理能力所驱动的创新正在飞速发展。电脑开始理解自然语言。人们通过身体动作来操控电子游戏,该技术可能不久就能广泛应用于商业世界。三D打印技术能够制造出来的物体越来越复杂,可能不久就会进入人体器官以及其它有机材料的领域。 创新悲观主义者也许会将这些贬为空头支票。有一种观点认为,由技术主导的增长要么会一直持续下去,要么稳定地衰退,而并非像潮汐那样交替起落。但是这种观点却与历史不符。来自芝加哥大学的乍德·赛沃森(Chad Syverson)指出,电气化时代的生产率增长是有波动起浮的。在19世纪末到20世纪初这一段重要的电气创新时期,生产率的增长缓慢;过后,则快速增长。 |