经济学人288:再次憧憬未来 Reimagining the Future

 　　“THAT city will, in the course of time, become the granary of the world, the emporium of commerce, the seat of manufactures, the focus of great monied operations,” predicted DeWitt Clinton, governor of New York in 1824. He was speaking about the effects of the Erie Canal, which connected the Great Lakes to the Hudson River. Originally derided 1 as “Clinton’s folly”, the canal helped to open up the west, allowing New York to benefit enormously from an explosion of trade. Within 15 years of the opening, New York was the busiest port in America, moving more than Boston, Baltimore and New Orleans combined. The plan to open an applied 2 sciences university campus in New York City, reckons Seth Pinsky, who heads New York’s Economic Development Corporation, is an “Erie Canal moment”.

　　德维特?克林顿，纽约当时的统治者，在1824年谈及连接五大湖区和哈德孙河的伊利运河时曾预言“城市经过时间的洗礼，将成为世界的粮仓，商业中心，制造业园区，吸引大型盈利项目的关注。”起初此言论被嘲笑是“克林顿式的愚蠢”，然而西部地区因运河而实现开放，纽约因激增的贸易往来而迅速地发展起来。运河开通后的15年间，纽约成为美国最繁忙的港口，吞吐量超过波士顿、巴尔的摩及新奥尔良的总量。纽约市经济发展局局长宾斯基预计在纽约市兴建一所应用科技大学将造就一个“伊利运河时刻”。
　　The city’s embrace of high-tech 3 has already begun. Tech clusters have emerged in Manhattan’s Flatiron District and Brooklyn’s Dumbo, home to firms like STELLAService and Etsy. Venture-capital firms and angel investors 4 have been looking at New York more seriously than they once did. Henry Blodget, of Business Insider, notes “the financing ecosystem 5 has also gotten very well developed, from late-stage private equity 6 right down to angel investing.” Some $1.2 billion was invested by venture-capital firms in New York in 2010. The Big Apple even overtook Massachusetts in venture-capital funding for internet and tech start-ups, making it second only to Silicon 7 Valley. And in the third quarter of last year, it surpassed it in venture capital in all categories. Between 2005 and 2010 employment in New York’s high-tech sector 8 grew by nearly 30%. Google alone has about 1,200 engineers in the city.
　　纽约早已对高科技产生青睐。各种科技型企业涌入曼哈顿的Flatiron区及布鲁克林的Dumbo区，从家庭式企业到公司如STELLAService 和Etsy。风险投资公司和天使投资人在纽约格外认真地寻找着机会。《商业内幕》的亨利?布拉吉说道金融体系在这里已发展得十分完善不论是从后期的私募股权投资还是天使投资。”2010年纽约风险投资公司的投资额约为12亿美元。大苹果城在对互联网及科技新兴企业的风险投资方面甚至超越马萨诸塞州，而仅次于硅谷。去年的第三季度中，各行业的风险投资均超出原有的资本量。2005年至2010年间纽约高科技行业的就业率增长近30%。单谷歌一家就拥有1200名工程师。
　　Much of this growth has been organic, but there has been some help from City Hall. Since 2002 the city has set up more than 40 projects to help the biotech sector and helped create a network of incubators supporting start-ups in that area. It also established a $22m municipal entrepreneurial fund, the first of its kind outside Silicon Valley. A year ago Michael Bloomberg, a tech entrepreneur before he became New York’s mayor, called on universities to pitch plans to develop and operate a new tech campus in New York in exchange for access to city-owned land and up to $100m in public money.
　　这其中很多是内生性增长，但仍有一部分得益于市政厅的支持。自2002年纽约已设立超过40起项目以促进生物行业的发展并构建企业孵化网路扶持创业企业。不仅如此，纽约还设立了除硅谷外首家2200万美元的城市创业基金。一年前，曾是一位商人的纽约市长迈克尔?彭博，号召大学为纽约成立一所新的科技大学集思广益，并将市属土地及高达1亿美元的公共资金作为奖励。
　　New York received seven proposals from 17 top institutions, including Stanford University which did so much to create Silicon Valley. Almost 6,000 companies, including Google, Hewlett-Packard and LinkedIn, trace their beginnings to Stanford. But Stanford withdrew from the competition last month, days before the mayor announced the winning proposal, which came from Cornell, an Ivy 9 League university, and its partner Technion, an Israeli technology institute. The latter is considered to be one of the driving forces in Israel’s tech industry. It helped turn Israel from a country of orchards 10 to one of semiconductors 11. Some 4,000 start-up companies are located around its campus.
　　纽约收到来自17所名校的7份项目建议书，其中包括为硅谷的建立做出极大贡献的斯坦福大学。将近6000家公司的创立都可追溯到斯坦福大学，如谷歌及惠普以及LinkedIn。但是就在上个月，就在市长宣布中标的建议书出自作为常春藤名校联盟中的一员，康奈尔大学及其搭档Technion——一家以色列的科研中心的前几日，斯坦福大学退出了竞争。Technion被认为是以色列科技产业的推动力之一。它促使以色列从水果之国转变成半导体生产大国之一。校园附近凝聚着近4000家创业企业。