Linkpost Dec 2024
Tech, China and Capital
At Imperial College London, me and some friends are working on a project to integrate existing engineering drawings to computers. This article explains why we have been having such a hard time. It also shows that we’re not alone.
Anywhere you read about “Industry 4.0”, you will think about this.
https://pathways.gfi-apac.org/value-chain-cultivated-meat/
New Good Food Institute page is up, and it looks beautiful! They lay out the entire production process of all 3 types of ‘meat alternatives’. My favourite is the cultivated meat page, with its nice blue accent colour. This is because I am biased.
https://progress.fiftyyears.com/
A table, showing underfunded areas for venture capital. This is arbitrage! High quality arbitrage! They are giving it to you for free!!
What has been, will be again. There is nothing new under the sun.
“The parents of migrants had terrible instincts. At every stage, they gave bad advice; they specialized in outdated knowledge and conservatism born out of fear… on the job front, their advice was invariably bad.”
Being in a separate country from most of your family, having language barriers, and being a continent away has a certain way of making you feel like no-one else is experiencing the problems you are. When I read this, some recognition pinged from within. I’m relieved I’m not the only one who feels like this.
The most interesting thing about these parallels, to me, is that the U.S. and China in many ways were starting from very different places. Prior to its opening up, China’s economy was entirely state-owned and state-planned, and its economic expansion was coupled with unwinding much of the state enterprise machinery, letting small businesses form and markets bloom.
The U.S., on the other hand, was on the other end of the spectrum. Prior to its economic expansion it had an incredibly weak state, and economy driven by very small enterprises. Its development was accompanied by the creation of large, powerful companies and institutions, and moving away from the “invisible hand” of the market and towards the “visible hand” of exchanges of goods and services mediated within very large organizations.
China’s success came from finding ways to mobilize its huge number of people and hasn’t necessarily been focused on operating at the frontier of efficiency. The U.S., on the other hand, despite its comparatively large population, had a chronic shortage of labor, and much of its development was focused on developing less labor-intensive manufacturing technologies like the American System. China built its success on the back of inexpensive labor, and it remains a middle income country. (emphasis added)
I know no-one cares, but it would be lovely for advances in automation to solve our problems here. I hope “新质生产力” pivots around to this. And for the entrepreneurs, govt. officials, scientists and engineers - we have so much more to do.
By default, capital will matter more than ever after AGI
which is this tweet below but way grander.
Speculative metaphysics - thinking about emergent, large-scale phenomena as “error correction”.
Have you ever wondered exactly who is responsible for driving Moore’s Law and how they are organized and fit within the greater semiconductor manufacturing firm? The answer is the technology development division of foundries. Here is an overview of what they work on, in the context of Intel’s old business strategy and why they failed.
Will all our drugs come from China?
The latest things that have come from there: new, but already phase-1 validated candidates, which Western biotechs are now keen to shop for and license.
It is in early-stage (phase I), oncology, and cell and gene therapy where Chinese companies are particularly active.
Within the last few years, China now on par with Europe (both behind the US) in new clinical trials started.