How India became the capital of the computing revolution.

Wired magazine has this detailed story about how India turned out to be the technology hub of the world in little over a decade. When I was growing up, computers were just making their appearance in India and I got my first taste of computers only when I was in high school. It has never ceased to amaze me that a nation that was so unused to technology could adopt it so warmly and swiftly, that its name is almost synonymous with computing today. If you are a reader of slashdot, you have certainly heard the dissenting opinion - how jobs are being stolen from here by people who will work for a pittance compared to American salaries, but the fact remains that contrary to popular perception, it is not just call centeres and grunt-job programmers who pervade India - my former classmates in Bangalore work on technologies that give me a complex when they talk about it. And yes, fundamental research does take place in a big way. Just ask General Electric, Texas Instruments or Intel. It is great to watch technology spread all over the globe in ways unimaginable a few decades ago. I do believe that instead of destroying jobs in the US, this shift will create job and business opportunities, and advance technology like never before. I wish I could peek ten years into the future to see what surprises may come!

[UPDATE: Here's the very interesting Slashdot discussion on the same topic]