more on NY Times Editorial on Globalization and Computing

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: RE: [IP] NY Times Editorial on Globalization and Computing
Date: Wed, 01 Mar 2006 09:57:28 -0500
From: RJR RJRiley.com <RJR () RJRILEY com>
To: dave () farber net


When an employee performs skilled work, especially things like engineering,
research, etc., and the project is done a considerable amount of
intellectual capital is created and left as a residual asset in the person
who did the work.  In order to prepare the people to do the work it is
innate that significant intellectual capital and know how has to be
transferred to those people.  This was the essence of what made Silicon
Valley such a success story and for that matter what has made America the
leader in innovation.

It is also true that those who build such intellectual capital will
eventually become the inventors of subsequent technologies.

Generally no consideration is received for either the transfer of existing
know how or for the new intellectual capital which has been created in the
people doing the work other than a brief time of lower labor costs.  In the
process the company which does this creates a pool on knowledge and
expertise in what will become their competitors which always comes back to
haunt those who facilitated such transfers.

American business HAS to start thinking past the next few quarter's profits
and start looking at the big picture.  Short term management is a cancer
which is destroying America's manufacturing infrastructure.

Ronald J Riley, Exec. Dir.            Ronald J Riley, President
InventorEd, Inc.                          Professional Inventors Alliance
www.InventorEd.org                   www.PIAUSA.org
RJR"at"InvEd.org                        RJR () PIAUSA org


- -------- Original Message --------
Subject: NY Times Editorial on Globalization and Computing
Date: Wed, 01 Mar 2006 09:18:01 -0500
From: Peter Harsha <harsha () cra org>
To: dave () farber net

Hi Dave,

For IP?

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/01/opinion/01wed3.html

EDITORIAL
Computing Error
Published: March 1, 2006

The outsourcing of computing work overseas may not be as bad as you think.
In fact, it probably isn't bad at all. Consider one recent study that says
the problem isn't so much the competition from high- tech workers in places
as far-flung as India and Romania as it is the discouragement caused by the
doomsayers themselves.

The Association for Computing Machinery, the professional organization that
issued the report, says that there are more information technology jobs
today than at the height of the dot-com boom. While 2 to 3 percent of
American jobs in the field migrate to other nations each year, new jobs have
thus far more than made up for the loss.

Think of the local companies that service people's home computers in towns
all over America, the way mechanics have long worked under the hoods of our
cars. When three people start a company, it attracts no fanfare, but put
such companies all together and there is a big effect in aggregate. The
Small Business Administration says that those smaller enterprises provide
around 75 percent of the net new jobs added to the economy.

And when a big company slowly adds workers to a new division because, say,
the middle class in India is buying more high-priced gadgets, the move
garners little attention. Globalization advocates have long contended that
everyone benefits from greater growth worldwide.

That picture, of course, stands in contrast with the more familiar gloomy
depiction of runaway outsourcing. Perhaps that explains what the report says
is declining interest in computer science among American college students.
Students may think, Why bother if all the jobs are in India? But the
computer sector is booming, while the number of students interested in going
into the field is falling.

The industry isn't gone, but it will be if we don't start generating the
necessary dynamic work force. The association says that higher- end
technology jobs - like those in research - are beginning to go overseas and
that policies to "attract, educate and retain the best I.T. talent are
critical" to future success. Given the post 9/11 approach to immigration and
the state of math and science education in America, that is hardly
encouraging.

Information technology jobs won't go away unless we let them.
Computing in the past five years has become, according to the report, "a
truly global industry." In the next few years, jobs won't just land in our
laps. We have nothing to fear but the fear of competing itself.


- --
Peter Harsha
Director of Government Affairs
Computing Research Association
1100 17th St. NW, Suite 507
Washington, DC 20036
p: 202.234.2111 ext 106
c: 202.256.8271
CRA's Computing Research Policy Blog: http://www.cra.org/govaffairs/blog


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