n the beginning was
the transistor, that lumpy, wire-and-germanium
precursor of the modern microchip, which set in
motion the electronics revolution and helped lay
the foundation for Asian prosperity. Like so many
other things - semiconductors, televisions, fax
machines-it was the product of Western
inventiveness, which soon became the basis of
Eastern industry.
Thus, in the early postwar decades
a cliché was born: the West had the
scientific and technological ideas, and Asia
developed a dominance in their cheap consumer
applications.
However apt that
cliché may have been in the past,
it is now dramatically outmoded. Led by
Japan, Asia is approaching the pinnacle of
technological sophistication and ingenuity
on a global scale. In the process Japan
and its understudies - South Korea,
Taiwan, Singapore, Hong Kong and others -
have displayed a capacity for practical
innovation that has simply awed the West.
They have reinvented products like
television (most recently in its large,
flat-panel variant) and turned floundering
Western technologies like the videotape
recorder into huge successes. Now when
consumer technology is discussed, Asia's
supremacy is universally assumed. Not
since the Middle Ages, when Chinese
inventions - the compass, the mechanical
water clock, gunpowder - made China the
most technologically advanced nation, has
Asia displayed such technical
prowess.
n the beginning was
the transistor, that lumpy, wire-and-germanium
precursor of the modern microchip, which set in
motion the electronics revolution and helped lay
the foundation for Asian prosperity. Like so many
other things - semiconductors, televisions, fax
machines-it was the product of Western
inventiveness, which soon became the basis of
Eastern industry.
