Shankaran Nambiar ('Let's not clap yet', April 30) makes a good point about unrealistic expectations of the Multimedia Super Corridor (MSC) leapfrogging Silicon Valley in importance some day.

It is not only a question of the amount of money invested in research and development in the US. Rather, some fairly straightforward research shows that the success of Silicon Valley, the Research Triangle in North Carolina, and other computer-related high-tech zones, is due to several factors that are seemingly not considered in Malaysia (nor, for that matter, in Dubai, where the local government has also arbitrarily established an Internet City):

- The proximity of world-class universities. In Silicon Valley, that refers to Berkeley and Stanford; in North Carolina, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Duke University. I don't foresee Malaysia or Dubai matching these institutions anytime soon;

- Plenty of venture capital (that means private, not government);

- An information society: in-depth, sophisticated business analysis, and freedom of information, with reliable statistics regarding the economy. An absence of propaganda certainly helps;

- Perhaps most important of all, in the US, the government stays out of it, other than providing certain research grants. The government certainly does not plan these zones. I am reminded of that paleontologist in Jurassic Park: The Lost World who states that what that lost island needed in order for its inhabitants to flourish was the absence of mankind. I think Silicon Valley thrives because of the absence of an overbearing government.