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Shenzhen is a hothouse of innovation

economist.com

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Re: Shenzhen is a hothouse of innovation

#41

Post by Animats »

arbuge wrote: post #10
Animats wrote: post #7

The "maker movement" is alive in Shentzen, but mostly dead in Silicon Valley. TechShop is mostly crafters, not people building anything innovative. Hacker Dojo is appslaves. If there's a maker space in Silicon Valley with a pick and place machine, I can't find it.

Pick and place machines are used for volume pcb production - not the kind of thing one would expect to find in your average maker space AFAIK.

There's one for $1799 intended for prototypes.[1] It's clever; it uses more vision processing and less tooling than other pick and place machines. Parts only have to be close to the right place; the vision systems do the fine adjustments.

Unfortunately, few people seem to have one working. There are two hacker spaces that got one, and there's even an unboxing video, but didn't get it assembled and working.

I could use one of those occasionally. The tweezers and microscope thing gets tiring, fast.

[1] http://www.liteplacer.com/

Re: Shenzhen is a hothouse of innovation

#42

Post by LiweiZ »

chaostheory wrote: post #9

> The common perception that China is incapable of innovation needs re-examining. No one is saying Chinese people can't innovate. The real question is whether Chinese people can innovate while inside China. (I wonder what percentage of current captains of industry in China studied abroad?) Why? Because innovation is essentially disrupting and rebelling against the status quo. ie breaking rules, disobedience, oppositi…

One key factor is the way people act in groups are limited to basically one mode: master-slave. We don't have the environment to nuture other modes, which is crucial for innovation. Also avoiding people equipped with that ability is one of the fundamental work to make sure no group can emerge to do anything effective.

Re: Shenzhen is a hothouse of innovation

#43

Post by Animats »

leggomylibro wrote: post #23
Animats wrote: post #7

The "maker movement" is alive in Shentzen, but mostly dead in Silicon Valley. TechShop is mostly crafters, not people building anything innovative. Hacker Dojo is appslaves. If there's a maker space in Silicon Valley with a pick and place machine, I can't find it.

This is also true in Seattle. The "makerspaces" here are incapable of working with anything beyond PLA. There are some cool tool libraries, which can be useful for larger hardware projects, but there seems to be very little in the way of true hackerspaces. If you want to get into EE or circuitry in the US, there are plenty of good online resources, but you will be at a severe disadvantage to people living in parts of…

1) Not in California, which is why attempts to copy Silicon Valley fail.

2) There's far more support online than there was a few years ago. There's good electronic CAD software for free. (KiCAD and LTspice are both free and useful.) Board fab is widely available and cheaper than ever. You can get overnight delivery from DigiKey if you order by 8 PM central time, but it will cost you. If you can wait a few days, no problem. They no longer have a minimum order. The 3rd edition of the Art of Electronics is out, so there's a good intro to modern electronics. (Although those old guys whine about tiny surface mount, instead of telling you how to do it.) There are good message boards. Usenet "sci.electronics.design" is surprisingly useful.

3) The machine shop situation is better than the electronics situation. I've been a TechShop member for years. Their machine shop facilities are good; their electronics facilities are about enough to do a blinking-light Arduino project.

Re: Shenzhen is a hothouse of innovation

#44

Post by dahdum »

Animats wrote: post #16
dahdum wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"TechShop is mostly crafters, not people building anything innovative." Techshop is just a place to learn and build things, not to showcase your commercial or innovative products. Those stay back home in the garage.

It used to be. I saw the prototype of WordLens at TechShop, long before Apple bought them. The case (but not the electronics) for Square's credit card reader was built at TechShop. There used to be startups renting rooms at TechShop for their workspaces. If you want a room at the Redwood City TechShop, they have lots of space available.

I'm a relatively new member - I don't doubt it's changed over the years, much like Hacker Dojo sadly did. In Redwood City I haven't sensed much community activity happening or a sharing culture - I chalked that up to Techshop being for-profit. Still very much enjoy my time there though.

Re: Shenzhen is a hothouse of innovation

#45

Post by foldr »

rmason wrote: post #28
hawkice wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that it's very possible that unrestricted political speech isn't needed for dynamic business environments. I feel like a lot of Americans are waiting for the other shoe to drop, but only use vague innuendo or metaphor to explain why free speech is necessary for the next electronics innovation. Can't we just say we like free speech? Because if we dont, and they can develop new commercial products without it, C…

The Tianenmen square protests failed ultimately because the rest of China didn't know they were going on. What happens now when with a flick of wechat the entire nation takes to the streets? All it will take is a leaders mistakes and a single spark. It's not a question of whether China will have free speech and democracy but when.

The Western world isn't doing a great job of advertising democracy at the moment. There's no natural progression towards free speech and democracy. It will happen if a majority of Chinese people are persuaded that it's a good idea. When they look at Trump and Brexit, I'm not so sure that they will be.

Re: Shenzhen is a hothouse of innovation

#46

Post by leggomylibro »

Animats wrote: post #43
leggomylibro wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is also true in Seattle. The "makerspaces" here are incapable of working with anything beyond PLA. There are some cool tool libraries, which can be useful for larger hardware projects, but there seems to be very little in the way of true hackerspaces. If you want to get into EE or circuitry in the US, there are plenty of good online resources, but you will be at a severe disadvantage to people living in parts of…

1) Not in California, which is why attempts to copy Silicon Valley fail. 2) There's far more support online than there was a few years ago. There's good electronic CAD software for free. (KiCAD and LTspice are both free and useful.) Board fab is widely available and cheaper than ever. You can get overnight delivery from DigiKey if you order by 8 PM central time, but it will cost you. If you can wait a few days, no pr…

I'm guessing by 'not in CA' you mean 'unbelievably shitty employment laws.' I feel like that's something we have some power to change, though.

And I agree that the online resources are fantastic, but to be fair, that's true no matter where you are in the world. KiCAD and group board buys like OshPark are amazing - I particularly like how KiCAD tries to prevent you from connecting traces that you shouldn't - but they do take ~ a month for your small batch of boards. You really can't complain for the price, but some smaller local fabs would be suh-weeeeeet. And sites like Digikey/Mouser/Jameco are expensive in small quantities, and the shipping adds up quickly if you go with small impulse orders. They also tend to be 5-10x more expensive than taobao for parts more complex than small discretes. The proven provenance is nice, but is it $1.50 vs. $0.20 nice? At those prices, it's worth just putting out several 20-50 piece sample orders and picking out the highest quality listing to grab in bulk.

As for machine shops, I guess you've had better luck than me. I've combed most everywhere North of downtown (couldn't even find anything in the industrial parts of Ballard,) but I'll have to look into TechShop, thanks.

Re: Shenzhen is a hothouse of innovation

#47

Post by z2 »

yourapostasy wrote: post #34
z2 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd caution against using broad strokes such as "The Chinese", which is a blanket identification that covers 1.2 or 1.3 billion people. Are you talking about the Chinese government that only cares about money and has 'no love' and promotes cheap shallow copies, or that every Chinese person is otherwise locked down to live a mediocre life while in China thanks to their government or their (implied to be) anti-disrupti…

As an outside observer, anecdotally, culturally at this juncture (plenty of room to change), from the lower class to upper-middle class families I was able to interact with in China last year, I didn't get a sense gǎi shàn (改善) was commonplace. The prevailing sentiment I experienced was chà bu duō (差不多), "near enough"...but that isn't peculiar to China, I run into that world-wide. I have a loosely-held suspicion on w…

You are absolutely right -- I was poking fun at the absurdity of saying that people as a culture or nation can be obsessed with self-improvement and perfection every waking moment.

I have heard the phrase used in the same empty way that many places must use it, along the lines of corporate pep-talks, such as "Listen up! We must improve and get better at what we do, etc. etc." This is obviously not the Toyota kaizen meme as said and did.

Re: Shenzhen is a hothouse of innovation

#48

Post by 0xCMP »

I've always wanted to visit Shenzhen. Ever since I studied it in a required elective in college ("Design the City") I've admired it.

sn: Sometimes the required but irrelevant/"easy" classes do provide some value. Anyone in college should remember that you need to expand your mind a bit too and sometimes take these stupid classes seriously enough to get something out of them.

Re: Shenzhen is a hothouse of innovation

#50

Post by seanmcdirmid »

finid wrote: post #30
chaostheory wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes the Japanese are polite and formal and like China there's a huge pressure to conform. However imo there's one key difference: the Japanese obsession with kaizen- constant improvement and striving for perfection. It may not override outward conformity for appearances sake, but imo there are enough Japanese who are madly in love and obsessed with the idea of attempting to achieve acme, that they're willing to risk…

Everything comes and goes. It's just the nature of things. When it's your time to lead the pack, you will, regardless of the cultural environment. Most of us (in the West) don't know it yet, but we're already in the Chinese Age . How long will their time last? The funny thing about the influence of culture on innovation is that when this country (USA) was rewriting the rules and breaking down boundaries this way and…

Ai Weiwei is not a minority. In fact, the only reason he is not in jail continuously is because his family is very powerful ("noble") in China.
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