Technological revolution

“ In 1790, the first patent statute initiated the transformation of the United States from an importer of technology to a world leader in technological innovation.
Today, just as in George Washington's day, inventors are the keystone of the technological progress that is so vital to the economic, environmental, and social well-being of this country. ”

“ Although it is indisputably true that the world of technology has been profoundly affected by the discoveries of “the heroes of science,” it must first be established that the major political, social, and historical changes are functions of technological development. Without denying in the least the pervasive influence of first steam and then power on our everyday life and its problems, it still remains true that new tools and techniques implement social policy rather than determine it. ”

“ It appears also, on the whole, to have been favorable to the fuller development of the handicraft technology, as well as to its eventual outgrowth into the new line of technological expedients and contrivances that presently gave rise to the machine industry and the large-scale business enterprise. ”

“ We also will help meet our goal of full employment in peacetime with a set of major initiatives to stimulate more imaginative use of America's great capacity for technological advance, and to direct it toward improving the quality of life for every American.
In reaching the moon, we demonstrated what miracles American technology is capable of achieving. Now the time has come to move more deliberately toward making full use of that technology here on earth, of harnessing the wonders of science to the service of man. ”

“ The technology which embodies the theoretical substance of this industry is a technology of workmanship, in which the salient factors are personal skill, force and diligence. Such a technology, running as it does in great part on personal initiative, capacity, and application, approaches nearer to the commonplace features of the institutional fabric than many another technological system might ”

“ Generations of risk-takers, inventors, and visionaries have made America the world's most prosperous and innovative nation. Just 25 years ago, most Americans used typewriters instead of computers, rotary phones instead of cell phones, and bank tellers instead of ATMs. Today America is at the doorstep of even more technological advances. ”

“ All recognize that, in its material aspects, this civilization today is technological, characterized by power-driven machines that have revolutionized the manner of human life. The general picture, from Watt's steam engine down to the automobile, vacuum cleaner and electric dishwasher is familiar to all. Most of what we regard as necessities and luxuries of modern civilizations have come through the application of science to everyday problems. The luxury of today becomes the necessity of tomorrow. Progress is continuous, and haphazard methods have been abolished. ”

“ The possibilities of modern technology were first in practice realised in England, by the energy of a prosperous middle class. Accordingly, the industrial revolution started there. But the Germans explicitly realised 137the methods by which the deeper veins in the mine of science could be reached. ”

“ The third force that surfaced in Europe after the end of the Dark Ages was the industrial revolution, which led to fundamental changes in the means of production at the same time that advances in natural and social science produced their practical counterpart--an explosive expansion of technology. ”

“ Second, we need to deepen reform of the science and technology management system. We will get enterprises to play a key role in technological innovation, and encourage more scientists and engineers to work on the frontlines of economic development spreading technologies, doing product R&D, and starting technology based enterprises. We will get enterprises, universities, and research institutes to work more closely together to accelerate the application of scientific and technological advances in production. ”

“ History reports the existence of such dissident individuals and social groups and movements in one civilization after another.
In a very real sense any invention, discovery or innovation in any field of human thought or action, if widely accepted or adopted automatically, becomes a revolt against the status quo. Our experience with innovation during two centuries of the great revolution gives us every reason to suppose that the flow of scientific and technical invention and discovery will continue for an indefinite period into our future. ”

“ But so precarious and transient was this approximation to a technologically feasible system of equal opportunity that, while the liberal movement which converged upon this great economic reform was still gathering head, the technological situation was already outgrowing the possibility of such a scheme of reform. ”

“ With the transition to modern times industry comes into the foreground in the west-European scheme of life, and the institutions of European civilisation fall into a more intimate relation with the exigencies of industry and technology. The technological range of habituation progressively counts for more in the cultural complex, and the discrepancy between the technological discipline and the discipline of law and order under the institutions then in force grows progressively less. ”

“ Why the need for a concept of Rapid Dominance? The answer lies in the combined realities of modern technology, economics, and politics.
Technology
The evolution or revolution of information technology is impacting everything we do and how we do it on a worldwide basis. The far-reaching effects of the resulting information highway that crosses all boundaries are already impacting the strategic decisions, economics, and politics of the world of nation states. Borders are no defense for the penetration of information even in highly controlled or authoritarian societies. ”

“ As a first step, let us declare that technology is the foundation of future economic development, as China did in 1998. ICT will jumpstart our old stalling economy and make it leapfrog into the new economy. ”

“ Here and there, long before the period of manufacture, and also, to some extent, during that period, these implements pass over into machines, but without creating any revolution in the mode of production. It becomes evident, in the period of Modern Industry, that these implements, even under their form of manual tools, are already machines. ”

“ The material sciences early show the bias of the machine technology, as is fairly to be expected, since these sciences stand in a peculiarly close relation to the technological side of industry,—almost a relation of affiliation. At no earlier period has the correlation between science and technology been so close. And the response in respect of the scope and method of these sciences to any notable advance in technology has been sufficiently striking. ”

“ To many of us now, computers, silicon chips, data processing, cybernetics, and all the other innovations of the dawning high technology age are as mystifying as the workings of the combustion engine must have been when that first Model T rattled down Main Street, U.S.A. But as surely as America's pioneer spirit made us the industrial giant of the 20th century, the same pioneer spirit today is opening up on another vast front of opportunity, the frontier of high technology. ”

“ The general assumption has been that once a technology is developed to commercial stage, the market machinery will automatically lead firms to adapt and invest in the technology. But this is not happening. ”

“ Modern Industry rent the veil that concealed from men their own social process of production, and that turned the various, spontaneously divided branches of production into so many riddles, not only to outsiders, but even to the initiated. The principle which it pursued, of resolving each process into its constituent movements, without any regard to their possible execution by the hand of man, created the new modern science of technology. ”

“ The wonderful progress of the present century is, in a very, great degree, due to the invention and improvement of the steam-engine, and to the ingenious application of its power to kinds of work that formerly tasked the physical energies of the human race. We cannot examine the methods and processes of any branch of industry without discovering somewhere the assistance and support of this wonderful machine.
Relieving mankind from manual toil, it has left to the intellect the privilege of directing the power formerly absorbed in physical labor into other and more profitable channels. ”

“ The pitch of squalor that characterized vulgar life in the busier Continental countries at the close of the great era of politics could probably not be reached again, but that again, is due, not to these spiritual factors of cultural growth, but to the altered state of the industrial arts. The factor in the modern situation that is alien to the ancient regime is the machine technology, with its many and wide ramifications. ”

“ Indeed, so far is the machine process from having yet recast the principles of industrial management, as distinct from technological procedure, that the efforts inspired in responsible public officials and public-spirited citizens by this patent discrepancy have hitherto been directed wholly to regulating industry into consonance with the antiquated scheme of business principles, rather than to take thought of how best to conduct industrial affairs and the distribution of livelihood in consonance with the technological requirements of the machine industry. ”

“ EFFECTS OF THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION.—In the last century and a half the Industrial Revolution has spread to every important civilized country in the world, everywhere encouraging the application of machine methods to more and more industries. ”

“ Ramo points out that intellectronics benefits not only the technical man but social man as well:
The real bottleneck to progress, to a safe, orderly, and happy transition to the coming technological age, lies in the severe disparity between scientific and sociological advance. Having discussed technology, with emphasis on the future extension of man’s intellect, we 263should ask: Will intellectronics aid in removing the imbalance? Will technology, properly used, make possible a correction of the very imbalance which causes technology to be in the lead? ”

“ The Greek engineer Vitruvius made an interesting observation when he said, “All machinery is generated by Nature and the revolution of the universe guides and controls. Our fathers took precedents from Nature—developed the comforts of life by their inventions. They rendered some things more convenient by machines and their revolutions.” Hindsight and language being what they are, today we can make a nice play on the word “revolution” as applied to the machine. The Antikythera computer was a prime example of what Vitruvius was talking about. ”

“ It has taken a whole century of incredibly swift mechanical advance, associated at the same time with the most blind, cruel, and brutal waste of child life and adult life, to arrive at the beginning of an adjustment between the demands of machine-driven industry and the needs and the just claims of the human workers. We have only just recovered from the dazed sense of wonderment and pride of achievement into which modern discoveries and inventions, with the resultant enormous increase of commerce and material wealth, plunged the whole civilized world. ”

“ When one speaks of increasing power, machinery, and industry there comes up a picture of a cold, metallic sort of world in which great factories will drive away the trees, the flowers, the birds, and the green fields. And that then we shall have a world composed of metal machines and human machines. ”

“ Our high-tech sector wasn't all struggling high fliers operating out of some one-story cinder block on Route 128 or the Washington Beltway. America had plenty of solid industry in high tech—computers, aerospace, office machinery—and American laboratories and universities were the envy of the world. ”

“ I am calling upon all Americans to open themselves to the opportunities presented by the incorporation of technology into their lives and livelihoods. First, government policies should not penalize but rather improve incentives for the entrepreneurial development of new technology so critical to maintaining industrial leadership. ”

“ The revolution caused by the introduction of machines in one branch of industry necessitated its introduction into another, etc. The means of communication and of transportation were extended. The steamboat, the railroad, and the telegraph were invented. Because of important inventions in the manufacture of machines it finally became possible to produce the necessary quantity of machines of all kinds. ”

“ This machine, invented and patented by you, has in it the labor of five or six generations; it has a value only as a part of the vast whole that we call nineteenth-century industry. Take [162] your lace-making machine to the Papuans in New Guinea, and it is valueless." [554] "Science and industry; theory and practice; the invention and the putting the invention in operation, which leads to new inventions again; head work and hand work,—all is connected. Every discovery, every progress, every increase in our wealth, has its origin in the total bodily and mental activity of the past and present. ”

“ Is there, or is there not, any possible way in which my factory with its machines can be made as human and as expressive of the human as a department store?"
This is the question that our machine civilization has set itself to answer.
All the men with good honest working imaginations, the geniuses and the freemen of the world, are setting themselves the task of answering it.
Some say, "Machines are on the necks of the men. We will take the machines away."
Others say, "We will make our men as good as our machines. We will make our inventions in men catch up with our inventions in machines." ”

“ By the invention of power-driven machines and by the distribution of the compact industries of the home through the scattered, innumerable business enterprises of the community, Science has given us, in place of a simple and near world, a complicated and distant one. ”