Punch line: Despite the hoo[la around Facebook’s IPO, social media is already passé in Silicon Valley.
America’s innovation engine is now focused on transportation, energy and manufacturing.
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A couple of snippets from an editorial in the WSJ : The Future Is More Than Facebook by Rich Karlgaard of Forbes.
Only a certain kind of company is getting rich in the Obama economy.
These are outfits that make algorithms — bits of software code cleverly strung together to take the form of an iPhone operating system, a LinkedIn social network, or a proprietary trading scheme.
But America can do better than that, and it will. In fact, the seeds are being planted now.
In Silicon Valley, investing in social-media companies is already passé. America’s innovation engine, Silicon Valley, is again overheating.
There’s a growing interest among bright minds to apply “exponential technologies” to solve problems much larger than whom to friend on Facebook: transportation (smart cars), manufacturing (3-printing), and energy (high-tech horizontal drilling).
Question: If America could have only one of the following — Facebook, Twitter or horizontal drilling — which would be the smarter choice?
Happily, we don’t have to make that choice. America remains the world’s innovator, a country without limits.
The Homa Files 