Source text in English | Translation by Katarina Maravić (#26611) — 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. | Silicijumska dolina ponovo cveta. Opet su poslovni parkovi duž američkog Auto-puta 101 ukrašeni obeležjima perspektivnih start-up preduzeća. Cene zakupa vrtoglavo rastu, baš kao i potražnja za luksuznim vikendicama u vikend-naseljima poput jezera Taho, što je jasan znak sticanja bogatstva. Zalivska oblast iznedrila je industriju poluprovodnika, a zatim i računarske i internet kompanije čiji je razvoj usledio. Njihovi čarobnjaci predstavili su nam mnoga čuda zbog kojih svet izgleda futuristički, od touch-screen telefona, preko trenutnog pretraživanja velikih biblioteka, do mogućnosti upravljanja dronovima sa udaljenosti od više hiljada milja. Ponovno buđenje poslovnih aktivnosti ove industrije od 2010. godine ukazuje na to da se napredak odvija velikom brzinom. Stoga će možda zvučati iznenađujuće što neke osobe iz Silicijumske doline smatraju da to mesto stagnira i da stopa inovacija već decenijama opada. Piter Til, osnivač kompanije PayPal i prvi spoljni investitor u kompaniju Facebook, kaže da se inovacija u Americi nalazi negde „između nemilosrdnog tesnaca i mrtvila“. Inženjeri iz najrazličitijih oblasti osećaju slično razočaranje. Osim toga, mala, ali rastuća grupa ekonomista smatra da je ekonomski uticaj današnjih inovacija samo bleda senka onog iz prošlosti. [ … ] Na globalnom nivou, inovacije koje pokreće jeftina procesorska snaga u punom su zamahu. Računari počinju da razumeju prirodni jezik. Tehnologija koja omogućava ljudima da kontrolišu video igre isključivo telesnim pokretima uskoro može naći primenu u većem delu poslovnog sveta. Trodimenzionalna štampa u stanju je da masovno proizvodi sve složenije nizove predmeta i uskoro može preći na ljudsko tkivo i druge organske materije. Pesimisti po pitanju inovacija mogu da odbace ovu ideju kao „prazno obećanje“. Međutim, ideja da tehnološki razvoj može samo da se nastavi nesmanjenom žestinom ili postepeno da opada, umesto da se odvija u smenjivanju perioda opadanja i procvata, u suprotnosti je sa onim što je istorija pokazala. Čad Siverson sa Univerziteta u Čikagu ističe da je porast produktivnosti tokom perioda uvođenja električne energije bio neujednačen. Razvoj je bio spor krajem XIX i početkom XX veka, u razdoblju važnih inovacija u oblasti elektroindustrije, ali je nakon toga usledio nagli porast. |