New Florence. New Renaissance.

Anthropology and Technology Adoption

"Why do Estonians and South Koreans love cell phones, PCs, and the Internet? Delivering the answer to that question is not the punchline to a very niche racist joke, it's actually the subject of serious research by Dawn Nafus, a Cambridge PhD wielding anthropologist for Intel.

The Index shows some surprises. The United States, for example, doesn't stand out as a particularly fast tech adopter relative to our level of wealth. Why not? Nafus explained that population size is actually a constraint on technology adoption, just the sheer number of connections betweens people seems to slow adoption.

As for Estonia and South Korea, her team found that they both have agile governments, strong offline social networks, and major upheavals in living memory (the transition out of Communism and the Korean War)."

Wired

U.S. Firms Competing in a New World

Jeffrey T. Macher, at Gerogetown and David C. Mowery at U. California at Berkeley have edited a book published by the National Academies Press on innovation in global industries from semiconductors to bio tech to financial services.

BusinessWeek has a gallery which shows the industries and US position in them.

Refinery City

Not in oil-rich Middle East, but on the west coast of India. When it is done it will process 5% of the world's gasoline. Fortune has a photo gallery.

The Hotbed that is Iceland

"We would like to be the world's laboratory for exploring a carbon-neutral future," says Ingibjörg Sólrún Gísladóttir, the country's foreign minister and former mayor of Reykjavik. Reykjavik Power, the world's largest geothermal heating company, and other local firms already export expertise to markets including China and the United States (which is the world's largest consumer of geothermal power and which hopes to boost that usage exponentially).

Fast Company

Innovation - in the English language

New Scientist (subscription required) has an analysis on how the language is morphing

"Historical trends are a useful guide to the future. One common prediction is that Modern English is following the same path as classical Latin ...

But history can only take us so far. The worldwide success of English, which puts it on many more lips and tongues than are found in its native-speaking homelands, and the development of global communications mean that the forces acting on the language are unlike anything seen in the past."

Twitter in Africa?

Courtesy of Thomas Otter, I saw this post about how Twitter may become a better mass communication (or alternative to government propaganda) and networking medium in African (and other) countries where mobile users outstrip computer users.

"In Malawi for example, there are about 50,000 Internet users against about 700,000 mobile phone users out of a population of about 12 million."

"Inventors" of Daylight Savings

If you live near the equator, day and night are nearly the same length. But closer you live to the North or South Pole, the longer the period of daylight in the summer. That has gone on for eons. But it took the genius of Ben Franklin to propose the concept of extending the day in 1784. The original essay on the topic he is credited with (it was anonymous) is here. 

But modern day Daylight Savings is credited to an Englishman, William Willett who described the concept in a pamphlet titled "The Waste of Daylight"

Of course, both are probably turning in their graves as they see the chaos their "invention" causes around the word today.

Rise and shine!

Made in Japan - only for Japan

PC World Canada highlights several mobile, credit card, auto, robotic and earthquake related technologies available only in Japan today

Egypt as a technology hub?

To be honest, Egypt has not come up as a candidate in global labor pools I have helped clients assess. But I remember from my time in Saudi a while ago, we had plenty of Egyptian programmers and systems administrators. Their Arabic skills clearly helped in addition to their technical skills. Number of Egyptians are also fluent in French.

So, I was not surprised to see Egypt's technology promotion group sponsor events at this week's Nasscom conference in India.

As this blog mentions

- Egypt has one of the World’s lowest telecom costs

- Egypt is emerging as a key partner location for the Indian outsourcing sector. I was surprised to know that Satyam and Wipro have already set up their facilities there. Multinationals like Unilever, Vodafone, IBM, Microsoft, P&G are already there.

- Egypt has one of the lowest (staff) attrition.

While the oil price boom in the Middle East, expect Egypt to emerge as a much stronger regional player over the next few years.

See also another post today on more Hasso Plattner's Africa Fund

Silicon Valley - First among equals

Mike Arrington writing about home in Silicon Valley versus Seattle, says "There is no where else in the world quite like this place."

He is right. The turnaround from the dumps from 2002 is nothing short of astounding. Social Networks, SaaS, web 2.0, widgets, gadgets everywhere. Joined by bio-fuels. And even more impressive - the local "old-farts"  - Adobe, Apple, Cisco, HP, Intel, Oracle among others - continue to do fabulously.

But he is also wrong. The Valley is actually not as dominant as it was in 2001 on a global scale when it comes to innovation and creative energy across a wide range of disciplines.

A little company in Espoo, Finland has been dominant and has many times Apple's global market share when it comes to mobile devices. Fortune recently called Brazil the "Saudi Arabia of bio-fuels". When it comes to architectural ingenuity Shanghai is blazing  new paths. So is Dubai throughout the cash flush Middle East. S. Korea leads the world in mobile speeds and apps.  Tiny Estonia is far more wired and its citizens on average use more net applications than any other place in the world. India is pioneering a whole bunch of vertical BPO services.  Singapore is attracting a number of medical and other IP intense industry. Munich continues to innovate with BMW, Siemens and more.

Oh, and did I mention Seattle, and a bunch of other places  in the US?

Yes, it is good to see the Valley back. But there are many innovation hubs around the world doing just fine.