[00:01.48]Lesson 10
[00:03.23]Silicon valley
[00:11.41]What does the computer industry thrive on apart from anarchy?
[00:18.40]Technology trends may push Silicon Valley back to the future.
[00:24.28]Carver Mead, a pioneer in integrated circuits and a professor of computer science at the California Institute of Technology,
[00:33.73]notes there are now workstations that enable engineers to design,
[00:39.37]test and produce chips right on their desks,
[00:43.50]much the way and editor creates a newsletter on a Macintosh.
[00:49.09]As the time and cost of making a chip drop to a few days and a few hundred dollars,
[00:55.39]engineers may soon be free to let their imaginations soar without being penalized by expensive failures.
[01:03.89]Mead predicts that inventors will be able to perfect powerful customized chips over a weekend at the office --
[01:12.21]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.
[01:22.93]'We've got more garages with smart people,' Mead observes.
[01:27.02]'We really thrive on anarchy.'
[01:31.32]And on Asians.Already,orientals and Asian Americans constitute the majority of the engineering staffs at many Valley firms.
[01:41.56]And Chinese, Korean, Filipino and Indian engineers are graduating in droves from California's colleges.
[01:51.80]As the heads of next-generation start-ups,
[01:54.87]these Asian innovators can draw on customs and languages to forge tighter links with crucial Pacific Rim markets.
[02:03.97]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.
[02:16.25]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.
[02:29.44]Before it becomes a retirement village,
[02:31.99]Silicon Valley may prove a classroom for building a global business.