REAL WORLD VIEW
Billy Gates just delivered his keynote yesterday, at the Consumer Electronics Show (Note: this is CES, not CSI). His delivery was as buggy and as technically flawed as his company’s products (but this time,it was funny!).
((Sorry, Bill. You really should get a Mac, you know. Your keynotes will have fewer breakdowns, and your audience will thank you. =) But I digress…))
What is very interesting about CES is what is NOT THERE.
What is not there is the leading edge in electronics, computing and communications. Oh, there is a bunch of interesting stuff there, but compared to what is available in other parts of the world, this is mostly second-rate stuff.
Sorry. If you really want the real leading edge goodies, you have to go to Japan or Korea – or perhaps, in a few years, China.
CEATEC.COM is a good start, if you want to see some of this amazing technology that we don’t even have access to.
DYNAMISM.COM is another site that actually exports a few of these products to the U.S. Market.
(You are very welcome to add to this list, at the bottom of this article)
Japanese technology, and indeed, Korean technology is about a decade or more beyond what we have here in the United States. Some of the things are pretty amazing. Their wireless capability puts ours in the shade. So does their automotive design and technology, and their steel industry. The only close competitor to the Japanese and Koreans, are the Europeans.
More than this, it seems that they are also far in advance in other fields, such as electric motors, hybrid automotive power sources, nuclear power technology, and medicine.
Don’t believe it? Just take a look at some of the links at the end of this article. How about a car that runs on fuel cells, that is already on the streets? How about a countertop washer/drier that runs on tap water? How about a PDA/7MP Camera/Cell Phone with a hard drive, collapsing monitor and world wide phone service? How about a laptop powered by a micro jet engine? The list seems endless.
And you would NEVER hear about any of this, if weren’t for the World Wide Web.
WHAT GIVES WITH THIS?
A) It is the fault of our government. Most innovations over here are accomplished without governmental support, except for those innovations for military uses, which is why we shine in military innovation, but lag behind in most everything else. Over here, it’s every man, or company, for himself.
B) The cause is also insular. It is part of our culture to be this way. If it’s not invented here, we want no part of it. I’m not talking about consumers here, but corporate heads and CEOs, who, as a group, can be the most insular of all, being driven only by the bottom line.
C) The cause is also R&D, or the decided lack of it. Most corporations live and die on the Quarterly Profit Statement, and such quarterly reports drive their stocks and their perceived value on the open market. This financial paradigm prohibits large expenditures on research and development, which mean most companies have ‘me too’ products, so do not expect world-class designs from them, or leading edge technology.
You see, the difference between us and Japan and Korea, is that their government not only supports and subsidizes their private and public companies, but they also give them much of their R&D funding. This is because as a country, they believe in doing whatever is necessary to win this economic ‘war.’
More than this, these foreign companies share their R&D with one another, in consortiums, that in many ways, would likely be illegal for our corporations to do here in America.
The hard part about all of this, besides the fact that American electronics technology is becoming second or third rate, is the EMBARGO of all these great Japanese, Korean, and European devices for the American consumers.
This embargo is in place for two reason.
First, Japan and friends don’t really want to sell us their latest and greatest stuff. There is not enough product to go around as it is. Nor do they want to allow some American company to backwards engineer their best stuff.
Second, American companies and the U.S. Government have these embargoes to protect their products on the open American market. Would you buy a new TV or Cell Phone from one of our companies, if you could own one that was a decade ahead of their products? Oh, you will see lots of foreign made electronic products sitting next to ours on the shelves, but these are all carefully competitive, aren’t they? I think, if you gave it some thought, you already know these foreign products are not their best ones, don’t you?
THE BOTTOM LINE
Yeah, watching our great nation of producers, innovators, and forward thinking businesses, sort of being left at the dock IS DISGUSTING, isn’t it?
It is made worse by the fact that these are some of the very nations we both beat, and helped rebuild, after World War II!
Even worse than this, most of the innovators in these foreign companies are educated in American Universities! Japan still sees that the best ideas and innovations are to be found HERE, and exploited by their own companies and consortiums, since most American companies do not have either the drive, or the research facilities, to take advantage of these advances for ourselves.
AN APPLE FLAVORED SILVER LINING
But there is one bright spot in all of this.
If you want to see real leading edge technology, dump CES.
Come instead, to the 2005 MacWorld Expo, beginning January 11th in San Francisco.
There, you will find true leading edge American products, produced by real innovators, utilizing advanced (and expensive) research and development, to produce world-class Apple hardware and software design in computers, media products, music players.
– and, who-knows-what else! – to be introduced at Tuesday’s 9:00 AM Keynote Address by Steve Jobs!
– or, stay tuned to this station for further developments, LIVE from the 2005 MacWorld Expo!
REFERENCES:
(this is a partial list, and growing. feel free to add to it.)
toshiba.co.jp (Sorry. The English version is disabled for this site on advanced appliances)
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