Is the Crouching Tiger a Threat?

Robert L. Glass asks Is the crouching tiger a threat? He is concerned about the growing dominance of the Asian economies in the computing field. He points to the dominance at the educational and business level.

He summarises his concerns as follows:

• Student populations: The number of Asian students enrolling in computing courses is increasing; U.S. student enrollment is decreasing. The difference is dramatic.
• Student competition: Asian students are winning international programming contests.
• Practitioners: Asian practitioners are increasing at a rate sufficient to pass U.S. practitioner populations in 2006.
• Researchers: Asian institutional software engineering researchers are rapidly accelerating their publication productivity, to the point where they are leading the world in that category.
• Business collaboration: Asian nations are beginning to work together to make sure their advancements continue.

This is a crisis from the point of view of the white US working class as jobs continue to move off shore to Asia or to Asian immigrants in the US. The whites used to dominate the computing profession - now it is Chinese and Indian ancestries that dominate.

In my class at University last semester, I was the only white student. The class was evenly divided between the Chinese and Indians. This was not unexpected because Australian Universities aggressively market themselves in India and Chinia. Plus the students get the benefit of the white man's seal of approval. This may soon disappear as the Asian Universities become the centre of the computing field.

Unfortunately for the Australian computing industry, there has always been a strong anti-intellectual current among the white male programmers, and managers (colour and gender differentiation not needed). Years of experience was all that white male programmers needed for employment and advancement. The others needed a degree just to get a junior role.

In any discussion, the years of experience trumped any theoretical knowledge. This has mirrored the development of Capitalism itself. The practical people were always against the scientific people. Knowledge was seen as suspect even though knowledge drove the industrial revolution.

Both types of people are needed to keep the system operational. Unfornately, not many people know how Capitalism works. They keep doing the things that seem to work without understanding why they work.

I said earlier that this was a problem for the working class. For the ruling class, they are not worried by this offshoring trend because they still own the factories and control the banks. They will still make their billions no matter where the programmers are located or what ancestry they have.