Governmental support for technology development
Breadcrumbs: The Future of Ubiquitous computing in 2025 --> Political: Governmental support for technology development
Description
IT developments are driven largely by competition and commercial reward, but many have their roots firmly in research funded by both the government and private sector. New products, processes, and services typically stem from the complex interaction of government, industry, and academia. Over the years, a particular blend of government, industry, and academia has been the foundation of computing innovation. Governments have realized that investing into IT research, development, and infrastructure allows for future economical opportunities and growth for their country. Countries such as South Korea, Japan, US, India, and China. The EU is realizing that their investment into IT is considered insufficient when comparing it to these competing nations. Europe’s leading competitors (the US and Japan) have understood this constitutive nature of digital technologies and spend 30% of their research effort on ICT. Europe only spends 18% and its per capita expenditure will soon be surpassed by China and Korea. In order to step up and improve Europe’s research effort in ICT, ISTAG proposes a set of concrete measures aimed at mobilising resources in the private and public sectors to invest more and better in ICT research:
- ISTAG invites the EU Member States to use all possible means to support and attract investment in ICT research.
To make it attractive for companies to invest in ICT research in Europe.
The EU will encourage IT investments to proceed along the four main trajectory paths for this next generation of ICT. These trajectories are systems and services that are:
- Networked, mobile, seamless and scalable, offering the capability to be
always best connected any time, anywhere and to anything;
- Embedded into the things of everyday life in a way that is either invisible to
the user or brings new form-fitting solutions.
- Intelligent and personalised, and therefore more centred on the user and their needs;
- Rich in content and experiences and in visual and multimodal interaction.
Through this effort the EU is directly stimulating the EU countries to invest into the development of ubiquitous computing.
Enablers
- Research
- Industry development
- High economic growth
- ISTAG: EU's report on support for development and research in IT development in Europe (one IT direction is ubicomputing)
- Competitiveness between countries: Japan has already made an official strategic investment into ubi-computing in 2002.
Inhibitors
- Recession
- Lack of commitment of industry
- Conflicting standards as companies generate a competitive advantage by sticking to their own formats.
- Lack of investment into infrastructure.
- Lack of acceptance by the users.
- Lack of qualified workers
- High risk involved in IT investments
Paradigms
A possible paradigm generated from the government investing in IT development and research is that it provides the IT industry a clear incentive into which direction they should invest in.
Experts
US IT Investments
- Andrew Bartels
- Tom Pohlmann
- G. Oliver Young, Katherine Brown
Timing
- In 1995 South Korea made a huge investment in IT to improve their economy. For more information looks on: South Korea