Poetically (not ironically), one of Pittsburgh's failures is its greatest success. In the mid-1980s, the Software Engineering Institute (SEI) was supposed to put Pittsburgh on the new economy map:
"It`s Silicon Valley for chips, it`s Boston for electronics and it`s going to be Pittsburgh for software", predicted Dr. Angel Jordan, provost of Carnegie-Mellon, the intellectual pivot of this turnaround.
That's a great article written by one of the greatest journalists ever to cover economic development and globalization, Richard C. Longworth. He captures Pittsburgh's Andrew Carnegie-like ambitions at a nadir of the steel collapse. Pittsburgh was in a tailspin that continues to haunt the region's demography to this day (read Null Space by Chris Briem, who had his own decade anniversary a few weeks ago). Fair to say, the SEI didn't pan out for Pittsburgh. Or, did it?
I've talked to a few people who know better than I do that SEI didn't save, as the fish the did, Pittsburgh. In the late 1990s, the policy powers that be accepted that fate. I accept that fate then and now. Software landed in Seattle.
The SEI couldn't fly. This turkey would prove to be a feast. What the SEI looked like last summer:
Carnegie Mellon University's Software Engineering Institute will continue research and development work for the Department of Defense thanks to the extension of a contract that could reach $1.73 billion.
The contract ensures that SEI, the only federally funded research and development center dedicated to cybersecurity and software engineering, will continue work under the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics for at least the next five years, with an option to extend an additional five years.
Burgh Diaspora drops the mic.
2 comments:
Hi Jim,
I've enjoyed your articles and blog over the last couple of years. Have you decided to move on to another form?
Thanks,
Drew
Hi Drew,
I'm still writing for Pacific Standard magazine. This blog was a 10-year experiment which probably ran its course in the year leading up to the migration to Pacific Standard. What I've blogged about finds expression in formal research at the Center for Population Dynamics. Over the next 10 years, I aim to apply what I learned while blogging here. Come 2017, I'll revisit this blog and ponder whether or not to annotate the research findings and policy prescriptions concerning economic restructuring in the Rust Belt.
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