Udhay Shankar N wrote: [ on 11:06 PM 11/12/2005 ]
"Greetings from Idiot America":
http://templeofpolemic.proboards42.com/index.cgi?board=theo&action=print&thread=1130126466
*well* worth reading in full.
Since Vinit brought this up again, here is one of
the other facets of this mindset, a perfect
example of what Frank Zappa called the VERY BIG
STUPID - a thing that breeds by eating the future.
http://news.com.com/2010-1028_3-5960391.html?tag=chl&tag=nl.e432
HP Labs director Dick Lampman won't quickly
forget the warm thank-you he received from England's Cambridge University.
Because so many foreign students failed to
receive study visas for the United States, they
were instead matriculating in the U.K. colleges,
and Cambridge's vice chancellor was absolutely
buoyant about the quality of their educational credentials.
"It was not the high point of my day," Lampman said.
Does it really matter that a few thousand
teenagers from the Third World can't study here
because of post-Sept. 11 restrictions? Many argue
that it does not. After all, the technology
business is booming, share prices are climbing,
and a few companies even are partying like its
1999. What's past is necessarily prologue.
The absence of a similar challenge of that
magnitude has left the U.S. lazy and complacent.
But traveling around Silicon Valley of late, I
haven't found many serious thinkers brimming with
Panglossian optimism when they assess the state of the technology industry.
Beyond the drop in student visas, they are deeply
concerned about a lack of national resolve to
deal with what some liken to a gathering storm.
In a world where access to knowledge is easier
than ever before, they don't assume that the U.S.
can retain leadership of the very technology industry it invented.
Consider the following data points, from a report
issued last month by the National Academies
Committee on Science, Engineering and Public Policy.
More than 600,000 engineers graduated from
colleges and universities in China last year. For
India, the number was 350,000. In the United States, it was a whopping 70,000.
In a test of 21 countries for general knowledge
in math and sciences, 12th graders in this
country performed below the international average.
U.S. industry spent more on tort litigation
than on research and development in 2001.
Those are just some of the highlights. If you
want to spend a thoroughly depressing afternoon,
download and read the rest of the report at your
leisure. If current trends continue, we may one
day look back to this period as the U.S. era's high watermark.
<snip>
--
((Udhay Shankar N)) ((udhay @ pobox.com)) ((www.digeratus.com))
