Innovation Clusters

Twenty-first century beef and oil

Texas is known for many things around the world, but chief among them is cowboys and wildcatters. Interestingly, those figures are archetypes from the Lone Star's two most famous industry clusters: cattle ranching and petroleum. Who knows what Texans will be known for in another 100 years? Below is a list of links to a number of cluster efforts underway in the state:

• Aerospace & Defense [PDF]
• Automotive Manufacturing [PDF]
• Aviation & Aerospace [PDF]
• Biotechnology [PDF]
• Central Texas Regional CIC [Austin]
• Clean Energy Incubator [Austin]
• Digital Convergence [San Antonio-Austin-Waco]
• New Media Consortium [Austin]
  
• Gulf Coast Regional CIC [Houston]
• Houston Technology Center
• Metroplex Technology Business Council
• Nanotechnology [PDF]
• North Texas Regional CIC [DFW]
• Semiconductors [PDF]
• Solar Austin
• South Texas Regional CIC [San Antonio]
• Telecom Corridor [Richardson]
• Texas Renwable Energy Industry Association

Russian Predicts New Texas Republic

Lone Star State, Single Again?

Former KGB strategy analyst getting his Warhollian face time by declaring U.S. will fall apart by 2010. His redrawn map of the U.S. was published by the Wall Street Journal, which although making for good copy, seems fanciful.

However, if for nothing but idle speculation, take a look at the map and see if you agree with the professor's analysis.

As if Things Weren't Bad Enough, Russian Professor Predicts End of U.S. - WSJ.com via kwout

First, it seems a bit fantastic that a Texas Republic would cover the entire South and Southeast. Ark-la-tex-ahoma seems more a plausible scenario, with bits and pieces of New Mexico, Colorado, and Kansas thrown in to the west and north.

Other issues that come to mind:

• Ignoring the huge differences in culture between West Coast cities separated by mountain ranges such as Seattle versus Spokane.
• Utah attempted to become its own country before, it's hard to imagine it not trying to again rather than throw in with the Pacific coastline states.
• Chicago is a super regional powerhouse whose influence stretches to Minnesota's western and northern borders, down to Missouri's southern borders and around to Indiana.
• Does Canada have influence to exert?

In sum, the professor would have done just as well to simply copy the scenario laid out in the excellent, but now cancelled show, Jericho. .:.

Squaring the Triangle

Also-ran no more, San Antonio set to become hotspot of its own

Austin has its software and hardware. Dallas has telecom and banking. Houston has oil and gas. But what of poor ol' San Anton? Tourism, a la the Alamo, Riverwalk, Sea World.

All well and good, but compared to its Texas Triangle neighbors, SA seemed a bit lacking. But San Antonio is doing just fine, thank you.

A recent post to tech blog site metafilter.com ("Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?" 12/08/08) shows San Antonio catching up in a big way. Focused on neo military-industrial-complex conspiracies rather than economic development, from the blog post it's easy to see that San Antonio stands to benefit in the future:

• The National Security Agency is building a data center in San Antonio that’s the size of the Alamodome.
• Microsoft has opened an 11-acre data center a few miles away.
• It's no coincidence reports up in the old hotel, an appropriately cryptic-named blogger, citing a new book by NSA expert James Bamford: "The biggest U.S. spy agency wanted assurances that Microsoft would be in San Antonio before it moved ahead with the Texas Cryptology Center. Bamford notes that under current law, the NSA could legally tap into Microsoft’s data without a court order."
• The blog entry ends with this warning: "Whatever you do, don't take pictures of it [sic] the spy building unless you want to be taken in for questioning."
  

Also worth checking out are the cheeky comments related to an Alamodome metric system, Alamo rental cars, and other geeky morsels of mirth. .:.