> Growing up in a BC suburb, it seemed like we were always 5-10 years behind the US on things like home computers, the Internet, cell phones, and e-commerce.
That's interesting. Growing up in rural Ontario, we didn't know any different at the time, but in hindsight we were way ahead of the curve. For example, I didn't know anyone who didn't have a computer at home by the early-to-mid 80s, even families that were, looking back, quite poor. Apparently that would have been unthinkable for our American counterparts. We had high speed internet to the farm by the year 2000, and in the early 2010s fibre was installed to the farm. That was (and still largely is) unheard of stateside.
Similarly, programming was taught in schools not only during my time, but also my parents' time. They recount writing programs on punch cards in high school. My generation was writing BASIC already in elementary school. Meanwhile, our friends to the south were still desperately trying to get programming into the classrooms just a few years ago!
Suburbs are stereotypically where you find boring people, so perhaps the disinterest in technology that you experienced was simply down to that stereotype playing out? The people around me have always seemed quite excited about technology. Perhaps B.C. was/is behind the curve, but I'm not sure that is telling about the country as a whole. I don't see that being the case at all further east.
> Canada also doesn't have much of an engineering/technology culture.
I posit that Canada's situation is that it is primarily focused on engineering/technology culture at the cost of not being focused on business culture. Canada is quite strong in engineering (and in producing engineers), but as you allude to, since the business culture is lacking the engineering and engineers go to where there is a business culture (i.e. the USA). Engineering for engineering's sake does not stand on its own. You also need business to prop it up. And that's where Canada fails.
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> Growing up in a BC suburb, it seemed like we were always 5-10 years behind the US on things like home computers, the Internet, cell phones, and e-commerce.
That's interesting. Growing up in rural Ontario, we didn't know any different at the time, but in hindsight we were way ahead of the curve. For example, I didn't know anyone who didn't have a computer at home by the early-to-mid 80s, even families that were, looking back, quite poor. Apparently that would have been unthinkable for our American counterparts. We had high speed internet to the farm by the year 2000, and in the early 2010s fibre was installed to the farm. That was (and still largely is) unheard of stateside.
Similarly, programming was taught in schools not only during my time, but also my parents' time. They recount writing programs on punch cards in high school. My generation was writing BASIC already in elementary school. Meanwhile, our friends to the south were still desperately trying to get programming into the classrooms just a few years ago!
Suburbs are stereotypically where you find boring people, so perhaps the disinterest in technology that you experienced was simply down to that stereotype playing out? The people around me have always seemed quite excited about technology. Perhaps B.C. was/is behind the curve, but I'm not sure that is telling about the country as a whole. I don't see that being the case at all further east.
> Canada also doesn't have much of an engineering/technology culture.
I posit that Canada's situation is that it is primarily focused on engineering/technology culture at the cost of not being focused on business culture. Canada is quite strong in engineering (and in producing engineers), but as you allude to, since the business culture is lacking the engineering and engineers go to where there is a business culture (i.e. the USA). Engineering for engineering's sake does not stand on its own. You also need business to prop it up. And that's where Canada fails.