The American Technological Challenge: Stagnation and Decline in the 21st Century

260 Pages·2011·1.951 MB·English

by  Jan Vijg

T A T c
he mericAn echnologicAl hAllenge

T A T
he mericAn echnologicAl
c
hAllenge
S d
TAgnATion And ecline
21 c
in The ST enTury
Jan Vijg
Algora Publishing
New York
© 2011 by Algora Publishing.
All Rights Reserved
www.algora.com
No portion of this book (beyond what is permitted by
Sections 107 or 108 of the United States Copyright Act of 1976)
may be reproduced by any process, stored in a retrieval system,
or transmitted in any form, or by any means, without the
express written permission of the publisher.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data —
Vijg, Jan.
The American Technological Challenge: Stagnation and Decline in the 21st Century
/ Jan Vijg.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-87586-885-1 (soft cover: alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-87586-886-8 (hard
cover: alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-87586-887-5 (ebook) 1. Technology and civilization. 2.
Technology—History—21st century. I. Title.
CB478.V53 2011
306—dc23
2011023176
Front cover: Peter Paul Rubens, Vulcan forging Jupiter’s Lightning Bolts. 1636–1638.
Printed in the United States

I dedicate this book to all the heroes of technology, from the
anonymous inventors of agriculture, to Archimedes, Ts’ai Lun, Bi
Sheng, Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, James Watt, Thomas Edison,
Henry Ford, the Wright brothers and Douglas Engelbart.