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21st translation contest: "The tides of tech" » English to Simple English » Entry #26804


Source text in English

Translation #26804

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.

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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.
Silicon Valley is booming again. New start-ups are opening up in the office parks along Highway 101. Rents are going up and more and more people are looking for vacation homes in towns like Lake Tahoe. This shows that people are making good money. In the Bay Area where semiconductors were first developed computer and internet companies have grown. Their leaders created many of the magical tools of our modern technology. These include touch-screen phones, instant library searches or drones that can be flown many miles away. Business has been going strong since 2010 and progress is making its way.

But surprisingly, some people in Silicon Valley don't think that they are moving forward at all. Peter Thiel, an inventor of an online payment system who also supported Facebook, is not happy with the speed of new developments. Many other engineers are disappointed as well. Some economists even think that there are not enough new ideas today compared to earlier times.

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Everywhere new things are developing, thanks to the new powerful processors. Computers begin to understand human language. People can control video games only through movement. This technology might soon be used in many business areas as well. 3D printers can create complex objects, maybe even human tissues or other organic material soon.

For pessimists, this is just a false promise. But history shows that there are not only two alternatives for the future of technology. Researcher Chad Syverson from Chicago points out that even the discovery of electricity did not always lead to more productivity. At the beginning of the last century, many electrical innovations were made, but growth was still slow at first. The boom only started later.


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