

The Coming Tech-led Boom - arikrak
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203471004577140413041646048.html

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ChuckMcM
Its an interesting article. I've pointed out to a lot of doom and gloom types
that historically the number of good changes and the number of bad changes are
pretty evenly distributed so one has to consider the good things that will
happen too.

The article sort of missed completely the change that is coming to medicine.
Recent articles in the Economist and medical journals have been pretty amazing
of late. One thing I read recently was the article on stem cells
(<http://www.economist.com/node/21543471>) which talked about cultures of a
patients cells, coaxed into becoming stem cells, and then allowing drug
therapies to be tested against the patients own cells. That is a pretty
radical change.

There will also be some interesting emergent systems. Watching the explosion
of 'smart' things and their interaction is interesting. Saw the equivalent of
a 'flash mob' at the theatre as the folks who tweeted they had seats available
and then a bunch of their college buddies showed up.

When you add that to a huge backlog of stupid things that were patented at the
turn of the century losing patent protection and suddenly everyone is ok with
building tech again. Definitely a good time to be an engineer.

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kls
I do concur with this article, during the .com boom, there was a lot of things
that just did not feel right, the infrastructure was not there, UPS and Fedx
where not what they are now, there growth happened slower than it could
provide capacity for the net. As such stuff like delivering a bag of dog food
just did not have the economic argument. It still may not be there but it is
much closer. Further organization like Amazon streamlined warehousing which
took time. Bandwidth was also another issue, people where innovating but they
where on pipes far bigger than was available to the consumer. This all lead to
a premature start to what people saw coming as such it inflated far faster
than the infrastructure at the time could compensate for.

Fast-forward to today, and much of those concerns have been addressed and
mobile sparked a new wave of innovation. I believe that today looks much more
like the industrial revolution (multi-sector advancements and convergence
among them) than the .com era did as such I do believe that we are riding a
bubble, just as the industrial revolution was, but it is a slower playing
bubble than most people think it is. A lot of people see shades of .com era in
the current atmosphere, but I shades of Marconi, Edison, Tesla and Ford. I
don't think, this time it is different I just think we are comparing the this
time to the wrong last time.

The parallels are very similar, a lot of disruptive technologies (lord forgive
me for using that term) invented at the end of a gilded age, an economic
collapse brought on by a society and economy in flux due in part by that
disruption, all the while refinement, commercialization and consummation of
that technology taking place followed by capital exploitation of the
efficiencies gained in commercializing the technology. There is a lot
different too, consumer debt was no where where it is now and we (at least
America) was not involved in major warfare in the lead up to the crash. That
being said, I think there is enough to be optimistic over. The convergence of
technology being the one that makes me most optimistic.

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jeffreymcmanus
The writer says that the US university system is awesomer than most people
believe and that the awesomeness of our university system is unmeasurable.
Then in the next paragraph he says we host "more than half of the world's top
100 universities". By what measure?

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victorhn
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_ranking>. By some international
rankings many US universities are in the top 100.

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startupfounder
Of course tech is/will lead the economy boom! Technology = doing 10x more with
the same resources. This in turn creates massive wealth. The kicker is that
this time technology startup costs are plummeting as the efficiency of
creating new technology has a much quicker development cycle.

Big Data, Smart Manufacturing and Mobile.

Look at every industry and they are all ripe for disruption. Cut out the waste
and make education more efficient. There are more incubators popping up every
day to take advantage of this situation. Many "startup" will fail, but that is
expected.

What is happening now is the 100 year storm. Jump on-board or get out of the
way.

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lkrubner
When you write something like "Of course tech is/will lead the economy boom"
you give the impression that you don't know much economic history. In the USA
the booms starting in 1983 and 2002 were both lead by real estate
construction. The long boom of the 1960s was powered in part by spending on
the Vietnam War. The limited recoveries of the 1970s were both brought about
by partial relief regarding the price of oil. During the last 50 years, only
the boom of the 1990s could clearly be classified as a tech-lead boom. Your
words seem to suggest that it is somehow natural for booms to be tech-lead,
when in fact that has been very rare. It is one thing to say that technology
is contributing to the economy, it is something very different to suggest that
technology is the primary driving force pushing growth.

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hazov
Liked the article although I believe with the rest looking for their place in
crowded sunbathing area I really think the United States, or any other country
for that matter, will hardly match, in this century, the same type of success
it enjoyed in the 20th century.

The US will be younger than both China and the Europe, but for me the best
chances for spectacular growth will come from India[1] and Africa, their
population will be much younger than the American and I think they are both
natural candidates for industrial jobs once the average Chinese worker becomes
older and begins to receive much more money for their work.

This is of course only an opinion.

[1]: Pakistan and Bangladesh probably should be included in this list as well.

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noobface
Non-sensical and vague enough to be a astrology reading.

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rabidsnail
"This time it's different."

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gamechangr
Great big picture specifics!

