Accident of history and sheer momentum. We had the cash and research institutions during the beginning of the digital age, and as a result we have the brain trust for both programming and hardware design. Remember that a huge percentage of programming languages, documentation, and surrounding culture (blogs, etc.) are not only in English, but culturally American. That’s a huge advantage for America in the tech space.
Ask HN: Why is the US the center of the tech industry?
11–20 of 94 posts
Re: Ask HN: Why is the US the center of the tech industry?
#12Re: Ask HN: Why is the US the center of the tech industry?
#13Lots of human capital because A) we have a large population, B) we have the highest level of economic development in the world, and C) we've done a great job of importing talent.
We were the main beneficiaries of the Europeans driving out their Jewish population. As a group, European Jews are responsible for something like 25% of our intellectual output over the last century, but only make up 2% of our population. Lately we've been importing an intellectual class of similar caliber from the Indian subcontinent. Kinda hard to lose the race when you have a huge proportion of the world's intellectual talent.
Re: Ask HN: Why is the US the center of the tech industry?
#14Re: Ask HN: Why is the US the center of the tech industry?
#15These companies were built on the shoulders of giants in silicon valley which had a ton of cold war era science foundation grants helping to prime the emerging industry.
Re: Ask HN: Why is the US the center of the tech industry?
#16First of all, the technology industry itself is not just exclusive to the US. Samsung is south Korean, Nintendo is from Japan, Siemens is from Germany, ASML is from the Netherlands. All of these are highly technological companies, with Nintendo having been at the frontiers of technology since decades. But of course, Silicon Valley is unique with its high concentration of hightech companies. This has multiple reasons:
* The US federal government provided massive amounts of funding, especially in earlier years. Oracle for example was jumpstarted by the CIA, an US federal agency.
* Economically, the US is highly developed, and has a gigantic market with over 200 million people who all speak one language. The EU didn't even have the unified market since a few years ago, and there is still inconsistency regarding the language. China does have both a more or less consistent legal regime as well as a consistent language due to their past efforts to teach their population a common language (this is non-zero effort as Chinese dialects are so different to each other, probably if it weren't for political influence you'd classify them as several languages).
* California in specific has at-will employment laws meaning a start up can be wrapped up quickly without having to pay large sums of money to employees.
* The US federal government maintains a large spying apparatus which has been increased massively after the 2001 terror attacks. They don't just use it for evil terrorists. It has been confirmed multiple times that they perform industrial espionage against companies in western countries, supposed allies of the US. The US government then gives the results of the espionage to industrial partners.
* Nowadays there are of course massive network effects.
Re: Ask HN: Why is the US the center of the tech industry?
#17Its pretty much culture. The US is open to ambitious people from across the world unlike a lot of countries, the US is big un deregulation unlike Europe which stifles a lot of their companies, there's one language, there's a culture of acceptable failure, willingness to try despite lacking experience, and slow-moving governments.
Its probably more but this is what I've seen.
Re: Ask HN: Why is the US the center of the tech industry?
#18First of all, the technology industry itself is not just exclusive to the US. Samsung is south Korean, Nintendo is from Japan, Siemens is from Germany, ASML is from the Netherlands. All of these are highly technological companies, with Nintendo having been at the frontiers of technology since decades. But of course, Silicon Valley is unique with its high concentration of hightech companies. This has multiple reasons:…
> The US federal government maintains a large spying apparatus which has been increased massively after the 2001 terror attacks. They don't just use it for evil terrorists. It has been confirmed multiple times that they perform industrial espionage against companies in western countries, supposed to be allies of the US. The US government then gives the results of the espionage to industrial partners.
Specifically which company has benefited from industrial espionage in a way that can even begin to answer the question posed by the OP?
Re: Ask HN: Why is the US the center of the tech industry?
#19Freedom and democracy are vital to open and honest discussion, which in turn drives innovation.
Sense of safety and security on all fronts let people concentrate on ideas and execution, rather than things.
Re: Ask HN: Why is the US the center of the tech industry?
#20A few things:
1. America's early expansion was designed to gain control over the entirety of the Mississippi river, which has the largest lockless waterway system serving the longest "useful" land area in the world with cheap boat transportation. This cheap transportation is the primary reason for American early development success, and continues to benefit America immensely to this day.
2. Every other developed country suffered massive losses in the world wars. America suffered no damage to her land or infrastructure, and was able to use her superior position at the end of the war to gain even more economic advantage over allies and foes alike.
3. America binged importing top scientific talent at the end of the second world war, most notably from Germany by offering them amnesty from war crimes (which massively boosted their rocketry, medical, and electronics industries).
The rest is largely snowball effect.