In The News

Biotech Crops Could Help Poor Farmers, U.N. Says

Justin Gillis May 17, 2004
The debates over biotechnology have centered on the environmental, health, and global equality issues implicit in any major agricultural technology change. Some charge that genetically modified food crops are detrimental to environment, biodiversity, long-term health, and benefit rich nations at the expense of poor. The other side – which now seems to be joined by the Food and Agricultural...

Build an Encyclopedia: Everybody is Invited

Andrew Lih May 5, 2004
Many predicted that the rise of the Internet in the 1990s would herald an information technology 'revolution' that would change almost every aspect of human life. While the reality for many has proven less exciting than the hype, there is one small corner of cyberspace that is living up to the internet's potential as a free, democratic space for the exchange of ideas and...

Silicon Valley Dons a Brave Face, Despite Worries

S.L. Bachman April 28, 2004
During the 1990s, Silicon Valley reigned supreme as the heart of technological innovation and the birthplace of the information technology revolution. Today, says globalization scholar S.L. Bachman, the tech hub is scrambling to mobilize regional resources to compete in the international technology market it helped to create. Economically, the San Francisco Bay region is recovering from the...

China's ‘Big Mamas' in a Quandary

Paul Mooney April 12, 2004
For quite some time now, the Chinese government and its net-surfing citizens have been involved in a series of serious net games. While the government seems bent on restricting the free flow of certain types of information into China that it fears will prove destabilizing – such as Taiwan, the Falun Gong – China's 80 million netizens (net citizens) appear equally determined to keep access to...

R & D: India's New Star Industry

Swaminathan S. Anklesaria Aiyar April 10, 2004
American multinational companies are setting up research and development (R & D) centers in India, participating in a new trend in the contemporary era of global capitalism - the outsourcing of production activities.. No longer content to only look overseas for low-wage service sector jobs like call centers, large US corporations are tapping into the technical expertise and specialized...

Innovative India

April 5, 2004
As the American elections draw near, the Economist takes a refreshing look at the outsourcing debate. Examining advances made in research and development (R&D) in India’s high-tech centers such as Bangalore, the article reports that many Indian IT professionals are rightly vexed about the portrayal of their country as merely “a source of cheap labor and a telecommunications link.” Although...

Buying Outside the Microsoft Box

Alvin Pang April 1, 2004
Last week's landmark European Union ruling and US$613 million fine are nothing but a drop in the Microsoft ocean. The maker of the Windows operating system has already appealed, and, by the time the case is finally settled, the ruling's proscriptions will most likely be obsolete given the rate of IT development. But these developments still leave open the question of whether...