by Brian Hioe
語言:
English
Photo credit: 造山者－世紀的賭注 A Chip Odyssey/Facebook
A CHIP ODYSSEY is an effective, if somewhat unoriginal look at the foundations of the semiconductor industry in Taiwan.
The attempt with the film is clearly to heroicize those who laid the grounds for the industry that Taiwan is the current leader in. However, the movie also does venture into several moments of criticality, while also having a distinct and clear argument about why the semiconductor industry in Taiwan has been so successful.
Specifically, the film situates the rise of the semiconductor industry in a period in which Taiwan stopped receiving American aid, which once constituted 6% of the GDP in postwar times, and had been expelled from the United Nations. As such, Taiwan was in dire need of finding critical industries in order to eke out a place in the world. This is also how the movie explains why Taiwanese engineers were willing to make great personal sacrifices for building up the domestic industry, whether that be relocating from careers in the US to working long hours.
If the movie emphasizes the foresight of Taiwan’s postwar scientific establishment in accurately assessing the eventual importance of the semiconductor industry to the world, it proves slightly awkward that this mostly passes over that such decisions were made by Taiwan’s authoritarian rulers. The suggestion that the growth of the semiconductor industry is due to this desire to protect Taiwan allows the movie to efface differences between the semiconductor industry during authoritarian times and in present democratic times.
A Chip Odyssey benefits from its many interviews with architects of the period. And its invocation of past historical periods is also accomplished deftly through the use of archival footage.
To this extent, A Chip Odyssey does also show victims of displacement caused by expanding science parks, while briefly touching on environmental pollution caused by science parks. Still, the movie could linger more on these moments and this is still a very distant side attraction compared to the movie’s focus on leaders of the semiconductor industry.
Ultimately, A Chip Odyssey proves a celebratory rags-to-riches story, in crafting a narrative of how a group of scrappy young engineers, motivated by patriotism, secured a place for Taiwan on the world stage. At the same time, the movie also links to current threats to Taiwan, in that Taiwan still needs to maintain its critical foothold internationally in order to ward off threats from China. Though not exactly ground-breaking in that respect, the movie is still highly fact-based and offers a wealth of information. For those interested in the rise of Taiwan’s semiconductor industry, A Chip Odyssey still provides a useful view.