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> Silicon Valley is dominant in web tech, not in tech. SV is dominant in web/mobile/cloud/social/productivity/AI/autonomous driving/electric cars/sharing econo

> Silicon Valley is dominant in web tech, not in tech. SV is dominant in web/mobile/cloud/social/productivity/AI/autonomous driving/electric cars/sharing economy and in foundational tech like programming languages, databases, kernels, and networking. This is in large part due to American graduate-level education in tech being vastly superior to anywhere else in the world, both in quality and in having its finger on the industrial and market pulse. (I've experienced high-quality graduate programs in other countries, incl. Germany, France, and Canada, who are just completely out to lunch in terms of what's relevant.) I know I'm making some big claims here but in my experience as a elsewhere-born American graduate student, software engineer, and world traveler, this is pretty much true.

jacquesm 8y ago
> web Invented in Europe, ca. 1989. > Mobile Mostly the Nordics > cloud Yes, Amazon is really good at that. Located in... Seattle > social Preceded by many countries we are now left with a handful of dominant players, and fwiw we could miss them and I wouldn't lose a single nights' sleep. But yes, Social is something that SV is dominant in. > productivity Which packages are we referring to here? Productivity is a bit broad to assign to SV in its entirety, or even dominance wise. There are so many players in that space all over the world that I'm not sure that is a credible claim. > AI Yes, probably you are right there. But the University of Waterloo, Canada is where the vast bulk of the current AI wave originated. > autonomous driving Is an offshoot of that AI effort mentioned above. > electric cars True again, and it couldn't happen anywhere else than in California. > sharing economy I would be happy to get rid of all of it. > programming languages, databases, kernels, and networking That's pure rubbish. These have been contributed too all over the world and SV is not currently dominant in any of that.
- dsajames 8y ago
  Half truths. Who cares if http was invented at cern so many years ago? NOW it's pretty dominant. Mobile? How are those Nordic countries doing? Seems to me it's Google and Apple.
mempko 8y ago
pretty much every piece of tech you mentioned had decades of government investment. Maybe what makes those places possible is government policy. Not many governments are as rich as USA.

jacquesm 8y ago

> web Invented in Europe, ca. 1989. > Mobile Mostly the Nordics > cloud Yes, Amazon is really good at that. Located in... Seattle > social Preceded by many countries we are now left with a handful of dominant players, and fwiw we could miss them and I wouldn't lose a single nights' sleep. But yes, Social is something that SV is dominant in. > productivity Which packages are we referring to here? Productivity is a bit broad to assign to SV in its entirety, or even dominance wise. There are so many players in that space all over the world that I'm not sure that is a credible claim. > AI Yes, probably you are right there. But the University of Waterloo, Canada is where the vast bulk of the current AI wave originated. > autonomous driving Is an offshoot of that AI effort mentioned above. > electric cars True again, and it couldn't happen anywhere else than in California. > sharing economy I would be happy to get rid of all of it. > programming languages, databases, kernels, and networking That's pure rubbish. These have been contributed too all over the world and SV is not currently dominant in any of that.

dsajames 8y ago
Half truths. Who cares if http was invented at cern so many years ago? NOW it's pretty dominant. Mobile? How are those Nordic countries doing? Seems to me it's Google and Apple.

mempko 8y ago

pretty much every piece of tech you mentioned had decades of government investment. Maybe what makes those places possible is government policy. Not many governments are as rich as USA.