Lesson 10

Silicon valley

Technology trends may push Silicon Valley back to the future.
技术趋势可能会将硅谷带回未来。
Carver Mead, a pioneer in integrated circuits and a professor of computer science at the California Institute of Technology, notes there are now workstations that enable engineers to design, test and produce chips right on their desks, much the way an editor creates a newsletter on a Macintosh.
卡弗·米德，一位集成电路领域的先驱和加州理工学院的计算机科学教授，指出现在有一些工作站使工程师能够直接在办公桌上设计、测试和生产芯片，就像编辑在麦金塔电脑上制作简报一样。
As the time and cost of making a chip drop to a few days and a few hundred dollars, engineers may soon be free to let their imaginations soar without being penalized by expensive failures.
随着制作芯片的时间和成本下降到几天和几百美元，工程师们很快就可以自由地让他们的想象力翱翔，而不会受到昂贵失败的惩罚。
Mead predicts that inventors will be able to perfect powerful customized chips over a weekend at the office—spawning a new generation of garage start-ups and giving the U.S. a jump on its foreign rivals in getting new products to market fast.
米德预测，发明家们将能够在周末于办公室完善强大的定制化芯片——这将催生新一代的车库创业公司，并使美国在将新产品快速推向市场方面领先于其外国竞争对手。
We've got more garages with smart people, Mead observes.
米德观察到，我们已经拥有了更多有聪明人的车库。
We really thrive on anarchy.
我们确实依赖于无政府状态。
And on Asians.
并且在亚洲人身上。
Already, orientals and Asian Americans constitute the majority of the engineering staffs at many Valley firms.
目前，东方人和亚裔美国人已经构成了许多硅谷公司工程员工的大多数。
And Chinese, Korean, Filipino and Indian engineers are graduating in droves from California’s colleges.
并且中国、韩国、菲律宾和印度的工程师们正成群结队地从加利福尼亚州的大学毕业。
As the heads of next-generation start-ups, these Asian innovators can draw on customs and languages to forge tighter links with crucial Pacific Rim markets.
作为下一代初创企业的负责人，这些亚洲创新者可以利用习俗和语言，与关键的环太平洋市场建立更紧密的联系。
For instance, Alex Au, a Stanford Ph.D. from Hong Kong, has set up a Taiwan factory to challenge Japan’s near lock on the memory-chip market.
例如，来自香港的斯坦福大学博士Alex Au已经建立了一家台湾工厂，以挑战日本在内存芯片市场近乎垄断的地位。
India-born N. Damodar Reddy’s tiny California company reopened an AT&T chip plant in Kansas City last spring with financing from the state of Missouri.
出生于印度的N. Damodar Reddy的微小的加州公司去年春天在密苏里州的融资支持下，重新开放了堪萨斯城的一家AT&T芯片工厂。
Before it becomes a retirement village, Silicon Valley may prove a classroom for building a global business.
在它成为养老村之前，硅谷可能会证明是建立全球性企业的课堂。