William Janeway strongly believes in the technology of today and the need for advancement of our technology. In an article published in The New York Times written by Quentin Hardy, Janeway voices his opinions on our world’s technology. As opposed to the recent report we read by Richard Lanham called The Economics of Attention where he suggests that our world is too caught up with “stuff and fluff,” Janeway thinks that our technology needs more support. “There is lots of stuff we should be doing in basic technology research that isn’t being done,” says Janeway. Lanham criticizes today’s technology for making us lazier people while Janeway thinks that advancement in technology can greatly benefit our world.
William Janeway is a Cambridge University alum and one of the great tech investors. His doctorate was in economics but he branched out because Janeway lost faith in the economic world shown through this quote,
Mathematical models and quantitative techniques had taken over the analysis of business, finance, and the role of government.that quantification of everything, he thought, led to arrogant conclusions, bad policies, and a tragic loss of the real-world color and nuance surrounding our lives in the marketplace.
Doing Capitalism in the Inovation Economy, written by William Janeway
Instead Janeway made himself and others great fortunes by investing in technology. He worked at Warberg Pincus, invested in start-ups, buyouts and turnarounds, his firm helped create BEA Systems and he wrote his own book called Doing Capitalism in the Innovation Economy. Janeway took a $54 million investment and within six years turned it into a $6.5 billion payout sold the night before the Internet stock crash of 2000, which he luckily predicted through his expertise and knowledge of economics. In regards to his book it is “more than a memoir, however, his book is an example-rich theory of the necessary tensions that create innovation and growth” (Hardy). Janeway is now teaching his book back in Cambridge, England.
One of Janeway’s main arguments is that the government is not taking advantage of technology nor advancing it in the ways that they should. He is critical of the government for the shortage in technology advancement:
A bigger part of the problem is that a lot of people in government don’t seem to think government can play a positive role. You could construct an interlocking laundry list of things for the government to invest in. The government has to be empowered on both the production and the consumption side of energy research. But you can’t even have that conversation in Congress today.
Janeway thinks that if the government invested more into technology that they would have the ability to improve many things. He comes up with a list of ways in which the government can help with and through technology:
- Play a role in areas like natural language processing and machine learning
- It should be funding universities
- Giving contracts to big companies that can build things, like General Electric
- It should be buying and testing products
Janeway sees the potential in the technology of today in many places. He says that this is the beginning of the “information technology revolution.” Start up companies are filling the Silicon Valley and now is the time to take those companies bigger. The government needs to not be so choosy with their support of these companies and they need to expand their support. Back in the 1950’s and ’60s the Department of Defense played a helpful role to the electronics industry, which Janeway believes needs to take place again. Now is the time to take the approximately 40 start-ups valued around $1 billion in Silicon Valley and make them into something beneficial for our world.