Source text in English | Translation by Li Xiaojie (#27022) |
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. | 硅谷重归繁荣。101 号高速公路沿线的办公园区再次挂起了初创企业的徽标,呈现一片朝气蓬勃的景象。租金飙升,对于像太浩湖 (Lake Tahoe) 这样的度假小镇,里边高档度假屋的需求也在飙升,这是财富积聚的一个迹象。湾区是半导体产业以及随之成长起来的计算机和互联网公司的诞生地。这里的精英们创造了许多让世界不断前进的奇迹,例如触屏手机、大图书馆即时搜索以及从数千英里外驾驶无人机。自 2010 年复苏以来,这里的商业活动一直呈加速增长趋势。 但出乎意料的是,硅谷的有些人士却认为这里停滞不前,几十年来,创新速度一直很缓慢。作为 PayPal 创始人之一以及 Facebook 第一位外部投资人的 Peter Thiel 表示,美国的创新“困难重重,毫无生气”。各领域的工程师也有类似的失落情绪。一开始是一小部分,后来越来越多的经济学家认为,与过去的创新相比,今日创新对经济的影响显得苍白无力。 [ … ] 整体来看,廉价处理能力推动的创新正在腾飞。计算机开始理解自然语言。人们通过肢体动作就能控制电子游戏——这项技术可能很快就会应用到许多商业领域。三维打印技术能够大量制造越来越复杂的各种物体,可能很快就会应用于人体组织和其他有机材料。 对创新持悲观态度的人可能会把这些斥为“可望不可及”的事物。但是,如果认为科技引领的增长要么持续向前,要么稳步下滑,而不是起起伏伏,这种观点本身就与历史不符。芝加哥大学的 Chad Syverson 指出,电气化时代的生产力增长就很不稳定。在 19 世纪末 20 世纪初的重要电气创新时期,增长非常缓慢;然后就一发不可收拾。 |