For my technophile readers...

[danaeris]

gizmodo.com is where its at for technology news and news on nifty products and gadgets.

And reading it makes me want to weep. Because North American technology is SO behind the ball, its frightening. I see these AMAZING products being released (most especially in the cellphone, pda, and computing world), but they are always for release only in Asia, or only in Europe, or something like that. Sure, there's some stuff that's pretty nifty coming out here, but the stuff coming out in Europe is EVEN COOLER, or being released there as many as 6 months earlier.

What does that mean?

Well, from a personal point of view it means I'm not going to get the nifty technology. Suck it up and deal.

What does it mean in the bigger picture? The bigger picture is so complicated. The thing is that... the location a product is being released in this case may have little to do with where the technology was developed. And if the company developing the technology is located in country A and owned by a company in country B, what does that say about both country A and B? So before we can figure out what that means, I think we need to know WHY the products are being released here so late or not at all.

My initial instinct is to believe that this situation is another sign of the stagnation of American culture, an indication that the future lies elsewhere, that the American empire is crumbling even though it isn't obvious yet. But am I jumping to conclusions? Well, obviously. Are those conclusions wrong? Unknown.

Thoughts?

Comments

[dicedork.livejournal.com]

When hegemonic powers rise they usually gain manufacturing, then comercial, then financial advantage, in that order. It happened with the Dutch, the English, and USA (the only three *real* hegemonies to date). The thing is it gets lost in the same order. Manufacturing, comercial, the financial. America stagnated sooner than the other two did, burying itself in a "if it's not broke why fix it mentality from the fifties". We're midway through the loss of manufacturing advantage IMO, and beginning to see the loss of our uncontested dominion of comercial markets. Likely in our lifetimes we will see the dollar plummet, and the US will no longer be the standard of the world, there will be fierce trade wars, and possibly phyiscal ones as well. (As new hegemonys in the world have risen before there were always a series of escalating conflicts with the "contenders")

If I had to hedge a bet, I'd say that either we'll turn it around and go for another "term" of hegemony, or Japan or Germany will oust us.

[auros]

I doubt Germany on its own will oust us, as Germany and France are in decline within the EU in the same manner that the US is in decline with respect to the world as a whole. Nonetheless, I would not be surprised to see the EU as a whole become a new superpower in the next 20 years.

Japan has been in a slump for a decade, and doesn't look likely to come out any time soon.

China is still a player, and a downright scary one, at that. They're making a great deal of economic progress without ever improving the standard of living, civil rights, etc, of those at the bottom of the ladder...

[dicedork.livejournal.com]

I agree that the EU might be a power that ousts it is only if they genuinely unite. Nationalism may win the day if one gains a larger peice of the pie.

Japan's slump is economic, and has little to do with there manufacturing industry.

China--I think that what your seeing there is forced industrialization (like what happened in the USSR in the 50's-70's) but such programs don't get far in the grander scheme without the cultural progression to match.

But you may be right. I'm not a political analyist. I got most of this from a freshman history class. :-p

[aaangyl.livejournal.com]

I know as far as cell/pda/wireless-type devices, it's often a matter of we just have way way WAY less infrastructure that a lot of these other countries. Also has to with where the major players (like Nokia) are based. Even during the dotcom boom, we were looking over to japan, new zealand, and some parts of europe to get a feel for what to expect next.

We wait on their technology, they wait on our movies and TV shows. Let me say that a few more times and I might even pull it off without wincing. :D

[aaangyl.livejournal.com]

Tho I'd also like to note how much of OUR software runs on THEIR devices. :D

[angelbob.livejournal.com]

Yeah, what she said. The American cellphone infrastructure is an absolute shambles, and a nightmare to build for. That's one reason that wireless Palms all used to use pager networks. They were available, standardized, low-power...

I have to agree with a later poster as well that very expensive devices are harder to peddle here, but I disagree that that's the main problem.

[calling-to-deep.livejournal.com]

A big reason our infrastructure is in shambles is because it's bloody expensive to build a network big enough to cover all of America's surface area. It's much much easier to build a system that works in England or Japan because they are smaller and it's less of a monetary investment for the company and/or government that pays for it. (That's also why Europe and Japan have such better railways than we do)

[auros]

Population density -- i.e. number of potential customers per unit of surface area -- matters a lot more than surface area itself. Surface area comes into play because of companies often feeling like they can't do a limited release (in, say, just SF and LA) and expand later, but that's just a failure of imagination. The expense issue comes with things like trying to cover the entire length of Route 5. A lot of your urban customers will want to get cell signal while driving between metro areas like LA, SF, and Seattle; but covering the highway doesn't get you any new potential customers. Europe's population centers, compared to the US's, are relatively close together; Japan's even more-so.

[deyo.livejournal.com]

According to an expert (I know, calling somone "an expert" doesn't make his opinion any more valid ;)) on NPR, America's "early adopter" syndrome may be to blame. Wireless service providers had an urgent need to sign on as many customers as possible, to build a market for the new product. To do this, the providers put out simple phones, and gave them away free or cheap with lengthy service contracts. Even now, a 2-year service contract can push the price of a $500 phone down to $300 or even $200, which is about as much as an American customer is willing to pay.

The newer units available in Japan and Europe are causing "sticker shock" when introduced in American stores. At the same time, cheap throwaway cell phones are flying out of vending machines in airports and hotels. American customers don't want more features, because they've become accustomed to ignoring the handheld and focusing on the service

Manufacturers and service providers are *trying* to market these new units with bundled features to the American audience, but changing consumer focus to that degree is a lengthy and challenging process.

[emmett-the-sane.livejournal.com]

In stark contrast to what others have suggested, I'm going to say that I think a large part of the problem is the immense cost entailed in serving the US market as opposed to smaller, more segregated markets.

With a market like Korea (where a lot of samsung cellphones are released first, or exclusively), your cost of deployement in terms of advertising, technology upgrades, consumer education, etc, are much less because it's smaller in physical size and population. Not only that, you can depend on a tighter concentration of demographics for advertising.

In the modern era, entire regions are seen as necessary to implement simultaneously. The EU is historically used to having seperate national markets, so while it can be viewed as a single market, it doesn't have to be. Americans, on the other hand, expect that certain things should be available everywhere (even if there's no reason to). So there's a mental mindset that you can't just roll out a new cellphone or PDA onto the California market, and ignore the rest of the country. (it depends on the type of product and company what the exact division is)

[nathanjw]

Cell stuff is funny. One reason that cell stuff is all over Japan in particular, compared to the US, is that the country is a lot denser. Half the population of the US, in the space of California (and the actual living space is a lot smaller). As a result, the required investment to get a certain level of tech in the US is much larger.

Another complicating factor is that compared to the US, most other countries have very expensive land-line telephone service. This creates more of a market for alternate communication technologies; it's widely credited with driving cell phones and cell phone text messaging there, for example; in the US, kids are IM'ing on cheap dialup internet connections for a similar social experience.

Finally, in the developing world, it's cheaper to install cell phone infrastructure than to run wires all over the place, which creates yet another different incentive structure for technologies. One might say that due to our extremely successful rollout of an early advanced communication technology - the telephone - we have much less incentive to jump into today's newer communication technologies. Stagnation? Possibly - but as a direct result of having been in the lead for a long time.