Taiwan first hosted the World Congress on Information Technology (WCIT) in the year 2000, at the height of the PC era, just as the dot.com boom was turning to bust, and Internet 2.0 had yet to be born.
The guest list for WCIT 2000 was impressive. Bill Gates was here, as were John Chambers of Cisco, Carly Fiorina of HP, Robert Young of Red Hat, and local hero Stan Shih of Acer, one of Taiwan's few global brands.
While the year 2000 doesn't seem so long ago to some of us, the highlight reel from WCIT 2000 looks completely dated.
It was a different time. Ma Ying Jeou was young and fresh faced as the Mayor of Taipei, as was Chen Shui-bian. Both had yet to be indicted.
The desktop PC was still the hottest thing around, and its highest use was booting Microsoft Windows and surfing static web pages on Internet 1.0, as well as downloading pirated music from Napster. The iPod, which has since come and gone, was just a twinkle in Steve Jobs' mind. Cell phones were still clunky, and the smartphone had yet to be invented. Yahoo! was the dominant search engine, and Google was just another also ran. There was no such thing as social media: No Facebook, no Twitter, no Instagram, no Snap, no Whatsapp, no LINE.
None of that was around when Taiwan hosted the WCIT in 2000.
Still, technology was ascendant and Taiwan was a world leader in IC design and production. It was called a "Silicon Island" and was the world's leading manufacturer for just about everything related to desktop PCs: Everything from the tower cases, to keyboards, mice, and modems, right down to motherboards, graphics cards and chipsets. Taiwan was at the cutting edge of technology, one of Asia's "Little Tigers," following in the footsteps of Japan's "Economic Miracle" with its own "Miracle Economy."
Fast forward to 2017, and things have changed. Taiwan largely missed the shift away from PC era to mobile and internet. Innovation has slowed as the social networking behemoths of Silicon Valley have come to dominate the new economy.
So WCIT 2017 could not come at a better time for Taiwan. We are entering a new era of technologies, among which include: Big data, IoT, cloud computing, edge computing, 5G, driverless cars, the circular economy, artificial intelligence, and the blockchain.
The WCIT official program is packed with speakers and forums, and there are a ton of side events to choose from as well. There will also be a "Living the Digital Dream" exhibition that is free and open to the general public.
It should be a great show. We hope to see you there. If you can't make it, you can follow along with our coverage here at Steemit!