Somewhere 未名

一个有趣的投票：

投票结果是：

 

不相信四万亿能够有效刺激经济的占了大多数。直接表示会有负面影响的竟然是三种意见中票数最多的。

我回国这期间，新闻联播则宣称经济刺激计划实施之后，工业用电、股票指数都呈现触底复苏的迹象，某专家接受采访时称其GDP先行指数早已预测到这次的复苏。地方电视台则大谈股价房价双高。美国为首的发达经济体还在下滑之中时，似乎中国政府已经成功地力挽狂澜。

那么怎么解释以上网民的观点呢？

比较敢说话的南风窗杂志，最近一期就做了几乎整整一期对中国当前经济结构问题方方面面的分析。说到此次的四万亿计划，几乎是直言由于四万亿所蕴意的高强度财政扩张和货币扩张，导致年度货币供应增加高达25%。而由于除国有企业之外的实体经济并未呈现复苏迹象，政府牵头的这笔巨额注入除了地产和股市之外别无去处，导致了当前股市与楼市的猛涨。可以预料如此空前的货币扩张将带来严重的通货膨胀。

FT中文网吴晓波的文章也谈到同样的问题：四万亿大蛋糕被国有部门尤其是国有垄断性企业分食殆尽，民营企业成了旁观者，而地方政府为了筹钱给中央政府的四万亿投资计划作配套资金也是加强了税费的征敛，加上外贸市场萎缩，民营企业愈发难以生存。

国家发展方向之偏向重化工业，国有大型及垄断企业之成为强大的利益集团，目前固然可以在一时保住GDP增速，长远看却可能成为经济的结构问题 - 产业竞争力，不带来就业增长以及居民收入增长的GDP增长，以及分配公平性的问题。

所以，CCTV说了实话，宏观数据是看好了，可这数据底下潜流涌动，吉凶难测，这才有了民众表达的担忧。

 

问题是，非专业的网民们尚且能看出来的问题，地方杂志、自由学者能看出来的问题，我们的中央喉舌、国家的某某专家难道就看不出来？他们看出来但是不说出来的原因恐怕才是最令人担忧的。假定上边要充耳不闻，民众的嗓门儿能否大到为喊回来一些自己今日以及将来的利益？这到可以检验我们是否有幸生活在开明的家长制之下。

 

前两篇提及的信息技术果然实现的话，我们在科幻电影里头看到的终结者式的视角和高级人工智能也就即将成为现实了；钢铁人里面辅助那位工程师进行魔幻般科学研究的智能电脑也离我们不远。至少，下面这个来自微软的未来故事已经近在眼前：

A few years from now, when you drive into a McDonald's parking lot, your dashboard computer will start beeping.

The computer is synced to your phone, and both devices have geographic location services. They know where you are and, based on your credit-card activity, they guess you're about to order another burger and supersized fries.

But because you've subscribed to Microsoft Personal Trainer 2015, a premium feature of the online health-management system you've been using since 2012, technology intervenes. The services are gathering information on your behalf, using a new software platform that began taking shape in 2008.

When your car stops moving, the phone projects your image on the windshield, similar to the way R2D2 played the holographic image of Princess Leia in "Star Wars."

On the windshield, you're looking chubbier than you do in the rear-view mirror, because the image shows what you'll look like if you keep eating this way.

Superimposed on the image is your current weight, the cholesterol reading from your last checkup and — highlighted in red — a notation that you haven't used your Web-connected treadmill for over a month.

The image flickers and zooms ahead two years, showing how you'll appear after gaining an extra 30 pounds and being diagnosed with diabetes. With the ka-ching sound of a slot machine, it starts calculating what will happen to your health and life-insurance premiums. Somewhere in the background, it sends an update to your physician.

The image on your windshield is more than virtual. It's reality, based on the medical imagery, health records and genetic profiling accumulated in your online medical-record repository.

All of those images are stitched together using Photosynth technology Microsoft acquired in 2006 when it purchased a Seattle imaging startup. The images and other records are stored and distributed by HealthVault, the health-information platform the company launched in October 2007.

HealthVault plugs into Amalga, the health-care-information platform Microsoft plans to launch this summer after testing by top-tier hospitals across the country.

作为科幻迷，这些即将到来的信息技术魔法让我兴奋不已。更高兴的是，微软从windows+office转向diversity战略已经不可逆转，比如改行去做上述的医疗信息系统。多年来忍受微软windows的折磨也将在可预见的将来结束——信息技术的进步从这个角度说也算符合马克思所谓的“解放全人类的事业”，呵呵。

前面一篇提及的cloud computing其实也涵盖了未来软件的发展，包括两个方面：

1. Web 2.0。其实已经不是个新概念，像wikipedia, facebook, youtube等都是web 2.0的应用。它强调的是用户主动的提供、分类信息，从而为整个用户群体创造价值。不过经历过若干次大大小小的技术革命之后我们知道，每一个新概念的提出，人们都可以在上面做engineering，做complementary innovation，延续数十年，直至其潜力耗尽。所以Web 2.0的应用也才刚刚开始。

2. SaaS (Software as a Service)。未来包括操作系统在内的软件可能都不再像现在一样把整个package提供给终端机安装，而是通过高速的互联网在软件供应商的computing centre为终端的企业和个人提供各种运算、存储服务。换句话讲，在个人终端，你只需要一个上网本，里头装了一个web浏览器就可以通过租赁软件服务而进行任何量级的运算。Google, Yahoo, 微软都已经纷纷开始测试部署SaaS概念的软件服务。至于传统的windows操作系统，也最终会被由网络提供的web desktop取代。作为一种早期体验，大家可以去试一试google apps, 百会，以及Cloudo。

 

这一切的实现，都有赖于真正意义上超高速宽带网络的建立。未来若干年内，固定宽带网络的速度将通过ADSL2+, Cable+Fibre, FTTH等连接方式从目前20-30兆每秒的速度提升到100兆每秒以上。移动网络也将由3G过渡到4G。

 

再看远一些，未来软件的发展趋势是所谓“语义web” （semantic web）。这种了不起但还没有被开发出来的技术，将把全球任何角落任何细微的信息进行逻辑处理，也就是把他们联系起来，这个时候电脑可以真正为我们提供智能的信息处理。比如说找某个人，你提供一个名字，那么跟这个人相关的所有在网络公开的信息，哪怕它散落全球各地，由不同的人以不同方式提供，都可以由电脑处理出来，出现在你面前的就是一份翔实的个人档案资料——年龄，性别，婚姻，邻居有谁，养了几条狗...

 

这个时候，网络的强大之处就不只是它不限量的信息流，还在于它强大的运算和对信息的智能处理能力。

 

对企业来说，拥有以上的IT技术不是“竞争优势”那又是什么？

web 2.0 及其电子商务应用将提供海量客户信息；

Cloud computing为企业提供灵活、低成本、不限量的计算能力；

加之语义web的智能信息处理能力；

这些都意味着更好地决策，更好地为客户创造价值的能力。

摩尔定律提出40多年，有人预测半导体技术将在未来几年达到极限——半导体元器件缩小到只有几个纳米的时候物理和化学性状会发生变化，其功能就会变得不稳定。操作系统方面，微软的windows系列似乎也已被挖尽潜力——vista臃肿无比，功能上却并无特别突破。延续多年的wintel轮番升级大赛有偃旗息鼓的趋势。更重要的是，更多更快的信息流对个人和企业是否意味着更多价值呢？未必如此。那么，90年代后半期兴起的“信息革命”要落下帷幕了么？

以上其实提到了两方面的问题：从信息技术的供给方面，期待突破半导体极限的技术出现；从需求方面，我们需要找到“更大更快”的巨量信息流的用武之地——当然不能只是为了多传几部高质量的电影。

 

带着这样的疑问，结合最近的新闻旧闻，我所找到的答案的轮廓如下：

 

供给方面

1. IBM金盆洗手个人电脑业务之后，其实把目光投向了下一代的计算机技术——云计算。它在业界强调了多年，未来“computing”的关键不在于PC的预算速度，而在于未来处于高速网络核心的platform——“云”——的计算能力。个人和企业用户将借此获得动态的几乎是不限量的计算能力。个人电脑终端的主要角色将只是作为输入和联网工具而已。说句题外话，每个产业国际巨头眼力和影响力确实不是一般，IBM卖PC业务跟当年日本家电企业卖CRT彩电生产线一样，乍一看是老巨头活力不足，竞争不过发展中国家低成本的后来竞争者，可是后来的竞争者笑了没几年就笑不出来了——眼下PC过个十年就落伍了，CRT买火了几年人家液晶电视是主流了。看一本讲日本产业竞争的书说，人家的家电巨头们90年代初就规划了10年后的液晶电视、蓝光DVD等技术，然后不动声色假装金盆洗手退出江湖，把手里的旧生产线高价卖给发展中国家，转身就开了他的新生产线做液晶做高清。

 

2. 英特尔在已有技术上做改进——改进芯片微观架构，改指令集，改算法——以Nehalem为代表，这些就不说了，反正还够它继续折腾升级几年。真正的下一代技术，去年年底在英特尔的实验室里已经做出了原型，也就是“photonic integrated chips”光子集成芯片。

...

the world first silicon modulator that encodes optical data at 40 Gbps or 40 billion bits per second. Today, I would like to share with you a silicon photonic integrated chip (PIC) that is capable of transmitting data at an aggregate data rate of 200 Gbps. Such an achievement represents a technical milestone towards the goal of realizing a single optical chip with terabits per second data transmission capability for future tera-scale computing.

As you may know, to fully exploit the computing power of multi-core and many-core computers, there is a need of high-speed and high-capacity communication network that can manage enormous data transport among the cores and memories. For high-performance computing, terabits per second transceivers may be needed in the foreseeable future. To achieve such a data rate, one needs to adopt various technologies such as wavelength division multiplexing (WDM), time division multiplexing (TDM), spatial division multiplexing (SDM), and their combinations. For example, WDM technology has been successfully used in today’s optical fiber communication systems. So far these optical transmission systems have been usually constructed with discrete components such as laser, modulator, detector, and multiplexer, filter, and so on. Although such an approach has been proved to deliver high performance, it is not only bulky but also expensive.

Photonic integration is considered to provide a cost-effective solution for high-speed high data rate optical communication for future optical interconnects in computing industry. With monolithic integration of various photonic components on a single substrate, the resulting PIC would have much smaller footprint and be more cost effective because of less demanding on packaging and testing in the PIC as compared to the discrete component solutions. Because the CMOS electronics manufacturing infrastructures and processing technologies can be directly applied to photonics fabrication, silicon based PIC is particularly attractive for the future optical interconnect (I/O) applications.

所以，可预见的未来，CPU的运算能力还是可能出现突破性的提高。所以又说句题外话，哪天英特尔开始卖它的纳米级生产线的时候，发展中国家厂商们可要想清楚了，同样的套不能老去钻。同样的钱宁可去买技术，然后自己消化吸收，再搞研发。

 

需求方面

1. 电子商务；

2. 基于数据分析的企业管理和决策；

...

The demand for people to be connected globally, to do business transparently, and to take computing to new frontiers, combined with the proliferation of smart devices and connected objects, will generate massive amounts of data. Turning that data into insight creates the opportunity to make organizations, industries and our world more intelligent and dynamic.

 

3. 全国性医疗信息网络；这一点几乎是美国科技经济智囊的共识——既是通过大规模投资缓解当前经济困境的良方，又奠定美国未来医疗、信息、相关服务业产业全球竞争优势的基础。

 

可见“信息革命”还远未结束，基于更高速的互联网和更强大的数据运算能力的信息技术将推动企业组织管理、消费、医疗、教育以及娱乐等等方面的重大进步。稍带些科幻色彩地说，正在发展中的pattern recognition等人工智能技术，将进一步提高海量信息的处理能力，未来信息技术对生产率进步的影响可以说是决定性的。是以深处经济危机中的美国各个产业，在出于谷底的2009年，仍然会将信息技术投资增加1.6%，这种投资显然是战略性的。

About a month ago, I gave a talk to students from China on the topic: the current financial crisis. It was during the preparation for this talk, that I took a comprehensive look into the crisis and the world financial, trade and foreign exchange system. Meanwhile, I formed my own model and understanding about the situation, believing that 2009 is gonna be worse.

 

Today, there came the news that many leading countries have formally forecast either severe slowdown or even contraction of its economy. It seems, after all, we could not restore the confidence, either in the financial system or in the overall economy. So for sure, it's gonna be bad. But for how much?

 

I have a personal experience that makes me realize it could be worse than we had expected. Here it is: almost all major economies are facing the pressure of depreciation in their currency value - US wants to do that; Singapore has been doing that; and China is doing that. In two or three months, my poor little saving in S$ shrinked by 10% in terms of US$ or CNY. Not to mention that I already estimated a lost during the scaring inflation in the middle of the year.

 

I believe this is happening to every saing account, and for most the investment accounts. So what happened?

 

What I see now, is that for decades the financial expansion has enabled one part of us excessively consuming too much (I am afraid this part means the developed part in the West, but not in Asia), perhaps as much as they can't payback in their life time; the other part of us are expanding our production capacity too much (in recent ten years China contributed to this chiefly) - they export and they accumulate wealth in the form of foreign debt.

 

But hold on, this ever-growing accumulated wealth, although is in foreign debt, has been largely dumped into the property market - land price soars up all the way. In other words, we have been piling our wealth in a illusionary form - property. Then coming to a day like today, when foreign asset depreciates as foreign currencies depreciate, the foreing debts that we hold lose their value heavily. Next, as the property market soon looses power as wealth accumulation weakens, our illusionary wealth - land titles - becomes trash papers.

 

This is an enlarged picture for the 1989 Japan. The saving part of us is going to loose a lot of their (including mine) wealth accumulated for decades.

 

This property market crackdown is not happening so fast in the Asian side (although there is every sign of this), because we are depreciating our currencies as well, so as to stimulate export a bit. But this can't hold for long, a competition of depreciating currency globally does not help revolving the economy, but for depriving the saving part of us the accumulated wealth away.

 

When all currencies depreciate a lot, a man-made global inflation that is purely nominal can not be avoided. In the end, this compepition of depreciation washes the debt of the west away. Leaving the savers in the east poorer. In this way, the crisis is not a one year or two year thing.

 

From this point of view, it is really a time that governments in the west strive to stablize their currency value, so that Asian countries do not follow. Westerners should take the courage to manifest that "we are going to pay back our debts"; and the easterners should say "Our industries compete in every means but depreciation in our currencies."