The Futurist

World and Asian Semiconductor Revenue Growth

I stumbled upon something while reading the Asian Development Bank's report on the world economy.  No big surprises here, but one tiny chart stood out.  The column chart of WW and Asian semiconductor sales from 2001 to 2006 indicates that while Asia accounted for just one third of semiconductor sales in 2001, they comprise half of it today. 

This encompasses a number of the main topics I discuss on The Futurist.  From The Impact of Computing (which is thus higher in Asia than in the rest of the world) to the accelerating rate of GDP growth (which necessitates so many large Asian countries, totaling 3 billion people, to all grow at 6% or more per year, just to keep total world GDP at its trendline).  From cellphone dispersion to PC adoption to enterprise server and router usage, semiconductor sales are just about the best indicator of economic and technological progress. 

Let's see how big of a share of world seminconductor revenues Asia can ultimately consume before the relative maturity of the US market is emulated. 

Related :

Are You Acceleration Aware?

Economic Growth is Exponential and Accelerating

The Mainstreaming of Virtual Reality

BusinessWeek has an article and slideshow on the rapidly diversifying applications of advanced VR technology. 

This is a subject that has been discussed heavily here on The Futurist, through articles like The Next Big Thing in Entertainment, Parts I, II, and III, as well as Virtual Touch Brings VR Closer.  The coverage of this topic by BusinessWeek is a necessary and tantalizing step towards the creation of mass-market products and technologies that will enhance productivity, defense, healthcare, and entertainment. 

Technologically, these applications and systems are heavily encapsulated within The Impact of Computing with very few components that are not exponentially improving.  Thus, cost-performance improvements of 30-58% a year are guaranteed, and will result in stunningly compelling experiences as soon as 2012. 

To the extent that many people who seek reading material about futurism are primarily driven by the eagerness to experience 'new types of fun', this area, more than any other discussed here, will deliver the majority of new fun that consumers can experience in coming years. 

Update (4/7/07) : HP unveils a variety of new technologies, from screens to sensors, designed to augment the realism of games.   

Zogby Poll - 64% Believe Media Tilts to the Left

A recent Zogby poll confirms what most Americans already know painfully well, that the mainstream media is significantly further to left of the political spectrum than the general population. 

Of all respondents, 64% feel the media as a leftist bias and only 28% perceive a right-leaning bias.  Republicans aside, 66% of Independents and even 17% of Democrats believe that the media has a leftist bias. 

Of course, none of this is a surprise.  This brings us to the useful part of this article.

Many leftists have a knee-jerk reaction to any mention of Fox News.  Whether they have ever seen it or not, they are firmly convinced that it is a fanatically right-wing news network.  The fact that Fox does feature liberals like Alan Colmes, Juan Williams, and Greta Van Susteren while CNN, MSNBC, etc. feature almost no Republican voices is unimportant in the formation of this opinion.

Even if we concede that Fox News is biased to the right, that makes it just one out of eight news networks with a Republican bias.  The left thus still controls 7 out of 8 news networks.  Why, then, the obsession over the lack of a total monopoly, when they already have an 87.5% monopoly?  Because their opinion is not logical, merely fashionable.  There is a reason 'fashion' and 'fascism' are similar-sounding words - they originate from the Latin words for conformity. 

So when your opponent says :

"..(some statement insinuating that Fox News deserves condemnation for having a right-wing bias)"

you can then call them on their hypocrisy by stating :

"But out of 8 news networks, if 7 are left-wing, and just 1 is right wing, and even that network contains liberals, why does Fox News bother you so much?  If only 1 out of 8 news networks caters to half of the population, yet you want to suppress even that, that means you are opposed to free speech, doesn't it?  How is what you seek even remotely fair?"

They will, of course, either quickly change the subject or attack you personally with childish insults.  Either tactic is evidence that you have exposed their desire to suppress free speech.  If they insist that Fox News should be suppressed because Republicans are 'dumb', then remind them of how people earning over $50,000  a year overwhelmingly voted for Bush, while Kerry had a majority only among those who earn under $30,000 a year.  Income may not corelate directly to intelligence, but income certainly does not have an inverse corelation with intelligence.  Anyone who suggests that a group that is 'rich' is simultaneously 'dumb' is desperately trying to fight off realities that fail to affirm their belief in their own intelligence.  This usually leads to a hatred of American meritocracy, for obvious reasons. 

Winning these debates is remarkably quick and easy, once you learn to offer rebuttals that take the form of questions that the opponent must think about, rather than facts that can be easily ignored. 

Update : Here is a remarkable attempt by Reuters to spin US success against Al-Qaeda as a negative, in a "success creates long-term problems" vein.

Update (6/21/07) : Actually, 64% is low.  MSNBC has identified that journalists donate to Democrats over Republicans at an 88% to 12% rate.  That they are this undiversified in ideology is problem enough, but that an agenda pervades duties that should be held to certain professional standards is even worse. 

Related :

The Way to Debate Iraq

Deconstructing the 'Leftist' Mind

America, in Relation to Peers

Do you feel that America is having a bad time?  That economically, politically, and culturally, we are in a rut?  Do you even wish that America had something that some other nation or region currently has?

Be careful what you wish for.

A European study has estimated that the EU economy is only as developed as the US was 22 years ago.  This does not even include the newest, poorer members of the EU like Romania and Bulgaria, which would drag down the EU stats even further.  Furthermore, the EU has a growth rate slower than that of the US, guaranteeing that the gap will continue to widen. 

Related : More on the Decline of Europe.

But China has a rapid economic growth rate, that enables it to catch up with the US, does it not?  With China's huge population, it needs to merely achieve a per-capita GDP that is one fourth that of the US in order to surpass the total size of the US economy.  That should be relatively easy, no?

China is not permitting new Internet cafes to open in 2007.  So much for free-market supply/demand, or supercharging economic growth through participation in the information age.  It appears that the question of how high prosperity can rise before the demand for personal freedoms directly forces the PRC to curb progress has been answered.  The PRC will continue to face more direct tradeoffs between economic growth and the restriction of personal freedoms.  It will be interesting to see which area they choose to make concessions in over the coming years.

How about India, then?  India will never restrict Internet access for the public, and has a young, growing population that Europe lacks.  GDP growth topping 8% certainly qualifies as enviable.  Surely, India has potential.

And it will always have potential.  If Europe is 22 years behind the US in economic growth, it would be impossible to calculate how far behind India is by that metric, as the US is only 231 years old (and has never been as poor as India is today).  India's infrastructure is so shabby that highways have an average speed of 20 mph, and large cities have to resort to restricting electricity availability to six days a week in order to ease grid overloads.  On the UN Human Development Index, India ranks a miserable 127th, even lower than many dictatorships and communist states.  India's per capita GDP is just $700 a year, a number which, by American standards, seems scarcely higher than zero.  8% annual GDP growth for the next 30 years will still only bring prosperity in India to where Mexico is today.

But, despite India being the poorest entity in this article, all Americans should note that India is the only entity here that is pro-US, and actually wants to emulate the US, rather than create an alternative model like the EU and China have attempted.  India deserves pity, but also encouragement from America. 

So there we have the state of three other regions that America is often compared to.  I will also throw in this chart of per capita GDP on a PPP basis, over the last 60 years.  The biggest takeaway from here is that basic growth appears easy, as a developing nation merely has to copy what was done by advanced nations before, but once a certain ceiling is reached, incremental growth becomes harder.  No large country of over 50 Million people and a per capita GDP greater than $20,000 a year has managed to sustain a growth rate higher than the world average (currently 4.5%) for an extended period.  Thus, China's rapid growth will moderate long before high per-capita GDP is reached, just as Japan's and South Korea's has.  Also note that India was richer than China all the way until 1991, and was probably at parity with South Korea and even near Japan in 1950, until India foolishly allowed itself to fall behind. 

Remember, the true measure of a country is the net of how many people want to get in, and how many want to get out.  This metric appears to rank America right on top. 

Related : Why the US Will Still be the Only Superpower in 2030.