There’s a link about Lenovo and China on Daring Fireball right now, and it reminded me of an article I recently saw asserting that China is possibly not the Eden it’s been made out to be.
My takeaway from the second article was that the Chinese government seems to be trying to play the part of a technological Maxwell’s Demon1: China encourages companies to send technology overseas, promising them billions in sales, but in reality that technology (and expertise) ends up staying local to China and the billions never seem to materialize.
Honestly it’s brilliant, and a part of me is cheering these multinationals being taken for a ride, seemingly as a result of their endless capacity for greed.
But I worry about a future where China (really, the Chinese government) is the center of the technology universe. For instance, all of our electronic goods are already made there — how long before they’re all designed there too? One could argue that we we’ve seen this movie before in the ’70s and ’80s — in Neuromancer (1984) and Blade Runner (1982), Japan has clearly eclipsed America as the center of technological innovation and culture — we’re even speaking bits and pieces of their language. One could further argue that Japan’s economic downturn later in the ’80s and ’90s is what “saved” our future.
But are we really safe? What if history is repeating itself out to finish the job it started, out for revenge — the part of history will be played tonight by Bruce Willis. Not to say that America’s actions are deserving of revenge, but this past American Century has certainly been an unstable one — after a century of pushing the envelope, of beating on the dressing room door of history (where is this going?) and sooner or later Bruce Willis is going to open the door wearing an uncomfortably short towel and looking very, very mad.
I don’t want to leave you with that image, and it’s honestly not the ultimate point I’m trying to make: right now, we live in a world that’s in flux. The days of things like the Concert of Europe seem to behind us — and I don’t mean that in terms of peace (although it’s certainly debatable how peaceful the world is right now), I mean in terms of the balance of power. In addition to the traditional nation states you’ve got multinational corporations, terrorist organizations, NGOs, and why not let’s count 4chan too.
It’s a free for all out there, and not everyone is playing by the same rules. Good luck, world.
