马克•安德森： 科技正在从低迷中复苏

    虽然不少人认为硅谷正在重蹈覆辙，21世纪初的互联网泡沫有可能重现。但风险投资人马克•安德森可不这么认为，在他看来，当今的科技完全不同：它正在从全行业的低迷中实现复苏。

    “我认为，我们正在从低迷中复苏，我想我们对于硅谷的低迷感受非常真切，”安德森-霍罗维茨风险投资公司（Andreessen Horowitz）的联合创始人安德森本周在参加高盛(Goldman Sachs)于加州旧金山举行的科技与互联网会议的小组讨论时表示。他所谓的“低迷”指的是2001年后众多互联网初创企业倒闭衰落的很多年。“这是一段非常痛苦的时期：全球很多地方都转向了房地产和其他激动人心的事情。”

    但安德森解释称，互联网的发展曲线同样遵循着汽车、铁路和蒸汽机等老一代技术的老路——卡洛塔•佩雷兹2003年出版的书《技术变革和金融资本：泡沫和黄金时代的动力学》（Technological Revolutions and Financial Capital: The Dynamics of Bubbles and Golden Ages.）描绘了这样的路径。安德森说：“一开始，根本没人拿新技术当回事。后来，它又太被当回事了，而且速度太快了。所有人都激动过头。然后，巨大的灾难袭来，然后才会迎来真正的开始。”

    安德森在小组讨论中也谈到了比特币，这种颇具争议的数字货币可以实现全球任何地点的匿名即时支付交换。不管现在外界怎么看比特币，什么“黑客、罪犯和硅谷人”的“痴人说梦”等等，安德森依然认为它是一项根本性的技术突破，指向他所谓的“分配信任”问题。“比特币是首个互联网层级的、达到互联网规模并由互联网打造的用于处理货币和交易的方法，”他说。“我们认为，这项科技本身带来了很多其他的交易类型，很多其他人们能信任的事物形式：数字股票、数字债券、数字钥匙、数字合约、数字签名、数字投票等。”

    随着各方试图将比特币合法化，比特币前所未有的多样性可能带来监管机构之间的“争抢”。但安德森表示，比特币已经帮助人们重新设想了未来金融系统的运作方式，而这对于特别是除发展中世界以外的国家可能是一件好事。正如他所提到的，有些国家仍困扰于糟糕的央行体系、糟糕的货币以及巨大规模的偷盗贪污。安德森的总结是：“因此，这项事实上完全在软件中运行、独立于任何国家政策，同时允许资金自由跨境流动的新科技一旦离开西方，前景不可限量。”（财富中文网）

    Contrary to arguments that Silicon Valley is repeating the same process that led to the dot-com bust in the early 2000s, Marc Andreessen argues tech is doing something entirely different: emerging from an industry-wide depression.

    "I think we're recovering from a depression, and I think we felt the depression very acutely in the Valley," said Andreessen, co-founder of the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, during a panel at Goldman Sachs' Technology and Internet conference in San Francisco, Calif. this week. By "depression," he refers to the years following 2001 when many Internet startups crashed and burned. "It was a very miserable time: a lot of the rest of the world moved on into real estate and all these other exciting things."

    Instead, Andreessen explains that the Internet is following the same trajectory that older technologies like cars, railroads and steam engines followed -- a path illustrated in Carlota Perez's 2003 book, "Technological Revolutions and Financial Capital: The Dynamics of Bubbles and Golden Ages." Explained Andreessen: "First the new technology is not taken seriously at all. Then it's taken way too seriously way too quickly. Everybody gets too excited. Then there's a gigantic catastrophe, and then stuff actually starts happening."

    During the panel, Andreessen also weighed in on Bitcoin, the controversial digital currency that allows anonymous, instant payment exchanges anywhere in the world. Despite how it's currently perceived -- that it's primarily the stuff of "nerd fantasy" for "hackers, criminals and Silicon Valley guys" -- Andreessen views it as a fundamental technological breakthrough that addresses the problem of what he calls, "distributed trust." "Bitcoin is the first Internet class, Internet scale, Internet-made approach to dealing with money and transactions," he argued. "We think the technology leads itself to many other kinds of transactions, many other forms of things you can trust: digital stocks, digital bonds, digital keys, digital contracts, digital signatures, digital voting."

    Bitcoin's unprecedented versatility will likely lead to a regulatory agency "food fight" for instance, as parties attempt to legitimize it, but Andreessen argues Bitcoin is already helping re-imagine how the financial systems works and that it's potentially a good thing in particular for countries outside the developing world. As he reminded, some countries remain saddled with poor central banking systems, bad currencies, and theft and embezzlement on giant scales. Summed up Andreessen: "So the prospect of a new technology that literally runs entirely in software completely independent of any national policy, lets money travel freely across borders is actually a pretty big deal once you get out of the West. "