美国的理工科教育和文化以及其对中国的影响
2020年3月1日看到了美国的大学普特南数学竞赛的结果:https://www.maa.org/sites/default/files/pdf/Putnam/2019/AnnouncementOfWinners2019.pdf。在前一百名里,华裔已经占一半以上了,也有一些韩裔和越南裔在里面。竞赛考的数学更
读者如果看到该博客上对留美反感的言论或许感到诧异。因为的确,中国数学物理信息奥赛
我从一位中国国际数学奥赛金牌得主的领英上看到了
We’re delighted to announce Apple CEO Tim Cook as our new Chairman of the advisory board of Tsinghua School of Economics and Management (SEM)! The...
被“点赞”,发给了我那朋友,他感到特别失望,他在清华有工作经验,对那个学校的文化
我那个朋友对姚期智极其反感。我也跟他讨论了关于姚期智和姚班。姚期智毫无疑问是一流
没有经历过美国的人难以深入理解,我就简单地大概地描述一下吧。美国理工科文化有种虚
我跟那朋友说了,中国计算机行业的根本问题姚期智和他的那帮人基本完全忽略的。最大的
为什么我对姚期智那帮人搞的东西评价没有那么高啊?主要因为它们的面太窄,算不上最核
美国理工科教育和文化一个很大的问题是忽略历史,我指的是学科的历史发展。我在美国上
新中国成立以来特别强调建立完整的工业体系,也就是 Martyanov 所说的这个 enclosed technological cycle,50年代苏联援助的156项就是为了这个奠定基础,它是一个模范的核心科
One of the last American crown jewels of micro-electronics is fast losing its shine.
This is an important point. One of the few technological areas the US had a clear lead over the Soviets in was microelectronics, specifically mass produced microelectronics and thus increased transistor density which leads to the higher clockspeed of computers, signal processing capabilities, avionics, and stuff like adaptive optics (microcomputers are also directly applied in NC machine tools in industry). The Soviets made up for this one area by a much broader spectrum of high technology. The Soviets also could always batch produce small quantities of the very best microelectronics, since their expertise (in physics, chemistry, materials science) was higher. It was just a question of perfecting the mass production of it (the particular kind of precision tooling, clean rooms, quality control practices) to such a degree of uniformity so as to mass produce it cheaply – that was something American industry perfected in the period from WWII to the Apollo program. Also, due to economic problems Soviets did not build enough production plants for microelectronics, so there was a production bottleneck on top of it. But the “technology” was in fact developed (just that actual components were in short supply).
Basically, since the Bell Labs system was destroyed in the 70s/80s, the US has “invented” nothing comparable. No interesting mechanisms (like the advances in WWII electro-mechanical fire control systems, servomechanisms and automatic control), no fundamentally new devices, no really new materials, etc. The US decided to just completely exploit an existing area (microelectronics – in one of those rare situations in which tiny advances in one narrow area automatically lead to “revolutionary” capabilities elsewhere (towards lower weight and power consumption) just because they are all related to a common device, the transistor) until now when semiconductors have reached a physical dead end, and on the other hand import Japanese machine tools for producing its own military equipment (e.g., atomic submarines). Soviets were ahead in: the automatic docking of spacecraft, virtually all parts of robotics and electro-mechanical (as opposed to purely solid state electronic) systems, hybrid computers instead of purely digital computers, photodetectors (lead-salt detectors used in military and IRST systems) used in homing devices, portable power plants (like the Pamir-3U device). Fundamentally new device schemes and even whole parts of fundamental science close to technology – nonlinear optics, “chaos in dynamical systems”, sustained thermonuclear fusion (the tokamak fusion trap), and ion (Hall effect) electrostatic thrusters (that are still the key to deep space propulsion), the “synchrotron” method of particle acceleration, were invented by Soviets.
That is to say: the US altered the nature of its technology base around the 1970s. Instead of expanding on a very broad front as in WWII, it relied on a single technology (that of microelectronics) with the belief that this is the most important part of the “technology base”. This it true in some ways: it is the most important base for increasing the economic effectiveness of ordinary (not high-performance) products, and so the most important base for boosting the economy as a whole. It improves the vast majority of the products that circulate in the economy. Production processes get far quicker and more efficient, energy consumption is reduced, etc. It is also crucial for discovering oil prospects (which depends heavily on microelectronics and general information processing) — this is why Russia still inherits this dependence on Exxon (but also why it has no good reasons for continuing to do so).
Thus if the US loses its predominance in microelectronics, it has nothing left.
遗憾的是改革开放美国的垃圾价值观越来越影响了中国。中国人把很多非常表面的东西,如
我的朋友说俄国和苏联的很多好的东西和文化是18世纪来自德国的,它从其受益匪浅,中
那我问他,为什么美国依然有很多厉害的理工科的人啊。他说很多是因为移民接受了更多的
他说在美国学习工作好几年又在道德价值观和性格上不受美国的影响是几乎不可能的。实际