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21st translation contest: "The tides of tech" » English to Slovenian » Entry by Andreja Dvoršek


Source text in English

Translation by Andreja Dvoršek (#26762) — Winner

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.
Silicijeva dolina je ponovno v obdobju gospodarskega razcveta. Pisarniške komplekse ob obalni cesti 101 spet krasijo oznake upanja polnih zagonskih podjetij. Najemnine letijo v nebo, prav tako kot povpraševanje po razkošnih počitniških hišicah v letoviških krajih, kot je npr. Lake Tahoe, kar kaže na bogatenje nekaterih. V območju zaliva se je rodila industrija polprevodnikov, ki je s seboj prinesla razvoj računalniških in spletnih podjetij. Tamkajšnji strokovnjaki so zaslužni za številna čuda tehnologije, ki svet premikajo v prihodnost, kot so telefoni z zaslonom na dotik, bliskovito iskanje po ogromnih knjižnicah in zmožnost upravljanja več tisoč kilometrov oddaljenih dronov. Preporod poslovne dejavnosti, ki poteka od leta 2010, kaže na nadaljnji razvoj napredka.

Zato je presenetljivo, da se nekaterim prebivalcem Silicijeve doline zdi, da je ta v odboju stagnacije in da število inovacij že desetletja upada. Peter Thiel, ustanovitelj PayPala in prvi zunanji vlagatelj v Facebook, meni, da se inovacije v Ameriki nahajajo nekje med hudimi težavami in popolnim mrtvilom. Tudi inženirji s številnih področij so podobno razočarani. Majhna, a rastoča skupina gospodarstvenikov je mnenja, da bi lahko bil gospodarski vpliv današnjih inovacij v primerjavi s preteklimi precej bled.

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Na drugi strani pa so dobile zagon inovacije na račun poceni računske moči. Računalniki pričenjajo razumeti naravni jezik. V računalniških igrah je upravljanje že mogoče zgolj s premiki telesa – gre za tehnologijo, ki lahko kmalu postane uporabna na mnogih področjih poslovnega sveta. S tridimenzionalnim tiskanjem je mogoče proizvesti vedno bolj kompleksen razpon predmetov. Kmalu lahko pride do izdelave človeških tkiv in drugih organskih materialov.

Inovacijski pesimisti bodo morda odmahnili z roko, češ da gre za prazne obljube. Vendar pa ideja, da mora tehnološka rast neprestano naraščati ali postopoma upadati, namesto da prihaja v valovih, zgodovinsko ni potrjena. Chad Syverson z Univerze v Chicagu poudarja, da je rast produktivnosti v obdobju elektrifikacije potekala precej neenakomerno. V obdobju pomembnih električnih inovacij v poznem 19. in zgodnjem 20. stoletju je bila počasna, nato pa je poskočila.


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