Ask HN: Why is the US the center of the tech industry?

There are several things that contributed to the rise of the dominance of American tech industry. In no particular order:

* World War II. In WWII, the only country that had the means to meaningfully fund longer-term military research projects was the US; in other countries such as Germany and the UK, these projects were defunded or reduced in scope to let the money and resources be allocated to things that would help prevent the collapse of the country. Furthermore, the US was the only large country to escape significant infrastructure destruction, which would preoccupy most of the rest of the world for another decade or so.

* The development of a strong education and research system. This is in and of itself a more complex topic, but one thing I'd call out is that the American wealthy have had a stronger tradition of philanthropy than their European counterparts, and a lot of that philanthropy was geared towards making sure that the US was well-stocked with universities, libraries, museums, and the like.

* Clustering effects. Companies tend to want to be near other companies that do similar things--it's why there's a lot a tech companies in Silicon Valley, even if they could do their job equally well from Illinois. Early computer research ended up being in the US, so the computer technology clusters have ended up being very US-centric.

* Market size. The US has historically been the largest market for tech, and arguably still is for certain segments of the market. Europe has been (and generally remains) too fragmented to be a single market, China and India historically too poor, and the USSR hampered itself with internal controls. Furthermore, the size of the US market also means that it tends to be harder for foreign entrants to break into the market than it is for US entrants to break into foreign markets.

> Do you think another country will take its place?

Eventually, yes. On what time scale, I can't say.

> Will growing internet adoption lead to growing patterns of geographic decentralization in the industry?

No. The internet has not reversed the trend for businesses to cluster together, and I see no reason to expect that should change.

> Is it possible cryptocurrencies will cause a rise in an internet centered tech industry?

I don't see how they could...

Also, Sergey Brin (Google co-Founder).

His father's tale of anti-semitism in Russia is now quite famous.

https://www.cnet.com/news/googles-brin-anti-semitism-forced-...

The eco system thing is one, the second is: Geopolitics, which plays a big role in that, I mean with the huge US influence the Silicon Valley companies can be global trendsetters, think of the FCC standing in the global,telecom sector.US allies could not ban UBER although they hate it, but they have to play the American (open market) rules. There were many superior products by non-American companies, Creative Technology got the first portable audio player, years ahead of Apple, yet they underestimated the value of the American market and spearheaded MP3 with total disregard for copyright issues (Napster days), Russian companies produce good stuff-Kaspersky et al- but they do not have the full "Eco system".

Encyclopedia Britannica has a decent introduction [1]. There are a number of books that cover the early development of nations, but the name of the book that dealt with waterways in depth escapes me at the moment. Possibly something by Marvin Harris or Jared Diamond?

[1] https://www.britannica.com/place/Mississippi-River/History-a...

I want to make what I hope is not an offensive inquiry. As a native (American) English speaker, both of your uses of the word "since" look wrong to me. In my reading, the first one should be "for" and the second should be "until". This is not the first time I've come across jarring uses of "since" online. What I'm wondering is: What is your background? Are you also a native English speaker from a different region? If so, what region? If not, what is your native language and is the English "since" deceptively similar to a word in it?

To try to make it less likely that this comment makes you feel bad, I will close by making the (true) statement that I found your comment to be interesting and insightful and your usages of "since" didn't hurt my comprehension at all, they just sounded weird.