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21st translation contest: "The tides of tech" » English to Galician

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Source text in English

Boom times are back in Silicon Valley. Office parks along Highway 101 are once again adorned with the insignia of hopeful start-ups. Rents are soaring, as is the demand for fancy vacation homes in resort towns like Lake Tahoe, a sign of fortunes being amassed. The Bay Area was the birthplace of the semiconductor industry and the computer and internet companies that have grown up in its wake. Its wizards provided many of the marvels that make the world feel futuristic, from touch-screen phones to the instantaneous searching of great libraries to the power to pilot a drone thousands of miles away. The revival in its business activity since 2010 suggests progress is motoring on.

So it may come as a surprise that some in Silicon Valley think the place is stagnant, and that the rate of innovation has been slackening for decades. Peter Thiel, a founder of PayPal, and the first outside investor in Facebook, says that innovation in America is “somewhere between dire straits and dead”. Engineers in all sorts of areas share similar feelings of disappointment. And a small but growing group of economists reckon the economic impact of the innovations of today may pale in comparison with those of the past.

[ … ]

Across the board, innovations fueled by cheap processing power are taking off. Computers are beginning to understand natural language. People are controlling video games through body movement alone—a technology that may soon find application in much of the business world. Three-dimensional printing is capable of churning out an increasingly complex array of objects, and may soon move on to human tissues and other organic material.

An innovation pessimist could dismiss this as “jam tomorrow”. But the idea that technology-led growth must either continue unabated or steadily decline, rather than ebbing and flowing, is at odds with history. Chad Syverson of the University of Chicago points out that productivity growth during the age of electrification was lumpy. Growth was slow during a period of important electrical innovations in the late 19th and early 20th centuries; then it surged.

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Silicon Valley volve florecer. Os parques empresariais que seguen a autopista 101 están decorados de novo cos logotipos de empresas emerxentes cheas de ilusión. Os alugueres están aumentando e, con eles, a demanda de vivendas estivais en cidades de vacacións, coma a do lago Tahoe, o que indica que se están a acumular riquezas. A área da Baía de San Francisco é o lugar de nacemento da industria dos semiconductores e das empresas informáticas que creceron grazas a ela. Os seus feiticeiros crearon moitas das marabillas que fan que o mundo pareza futurista, dende teléfonos táctiles ou procuras instantáneas en grandes bibliotecas á capacidade de pilotar drons a miles de quilómetros de distancia. A resurrección da súa actividade dende o ano 2010 suxire que o progreso segue en marcha.

Por todo isto, pode sorprender que haxa xente en Silicon Valley que cre que o val está estancado e a innovación leva décadas desacelerando. Peter Thiel, cofundador de PayPal e o primeiro inversor externo de Facebook, di que a innovación nos EUA está «nalgún punto entre en perigo de extinción e morta». Enxeñeiros de todo tipo de ámbitos comparten os seus sentimentos de desilusión, e un pequeno grupo (aínda que en crecemento) de economistas pensa que as innovacións de hoxe en día palidecen en comparación coas do pasado no que se refire ó seu impacto económico.

[ … ]

En xeral, as innovacións alimentadas polo abaratamento da potencia de procesado están en ascenso. Os ordenadores comezaron a comprender a linguaxe natural. Hai xente controlando videoxogos exclusivamente mediante movementos corporais, unha tecnoloxía que pronto podería ser aproveitada por unha gran parte do mundo dos negocios. As impresións en 3D poden producir obxectos cada vez máis complexos, e pronto poderían evolucionar a tecidos humanos e outros materiais orgánicos.

Os pesimistas sobre innovacións poderían pensar que isto terá lugar «non hoxe, mañá». Con todo, a idea de que o crecemento impulsado pola tecnoloxía só pode ser continuo ou entrar nunha desaceleración constante, non ter altos e baixos, non se reflicte na historia. Chad Syverson, da universidade de Chicago, indicou que a produtividade creceu ós tombos na era da electrificación. A finais do século XIX e comezos do XX, un tempo de importantes innovacións eléctricas, o crecemento foi lento, e só comezou a despegar con posterioridade.
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