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Technology and Economic Growth in the Information Age
End Notes
1 Just the doomsday book titles alone are enough to scare us to death.
A long list, it would include: Dr. Ravi Batra, The Pooring of America:
Competition and the Myth of Free Trade (New York: Collier Books, 1994);
Jeffrey Madrick, The End of Affluence: The Causes and Consequences of
America's Economic Dilemma (New York: Random House, 1995); Katherine
S. Newman, Declining Fortunes: The Withering of the American Dream
(New York: Basic Books, 1993); Wallace C. Peterson, Silent Depression:
the Fate of the American Dream (New York: W.W. Norton, 1994); and Juliet
B. Schor, The Overworked American: The Unexpected Decline of Leisure
(New York: Basic Books, 1993). 2 For a discussion of these aspects, see W. Michael Cox and Richard Alm,
"The Economy at Light Speed: Technology and Growth in the Information
Age and Beyond," Annual Report, Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas,
1996, pp. 2-17. 3 The list of inventors' failed endeavors would fill books. For an amusing
and instructive exploration of this topic see Kenneth Larson, Mousetraps
and Muffling Caps: One Hundred Brilliant and Bizarre United States Patents
(New York: Arbor House, 1986). 4 Joseph Schumpeter understood the capitalist mechanism quite clearly
when he wrote "Economists are at long last emerging from the stage
in which price competition was all they saw. In capitalist reality...it
is not that kind of competition which counts but the competition from the
new commodity, the new technology, the new source of supply, the new type
of organization....Competition which...strikes...existing firms...at their
foundations and their very lives. This kind of competition is ... much more
effective than the other... and [is]...the powerful lever that in the long
run expands output." Joseph A. Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism,
and Democracy (New York: Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1950), p.
84. 5 U.S. Bureau of the Census, Statistical Abstract of the United States:
1996 (116th edition) (Washington, D.C., 1996), Table No. 855, "New
Product Introductions of Consumer Packaged Products: 1980 to 1994,"
p. 548. 6 Otis Port, "Look Ma, No Hands," Business Week, August
14, 1995, pp. 80-81. 7 John Carey, "Tilling the Soil by Satellite," Business
Week, December 11, 1995, p. 112; Phil Scott, "Never Get Lost Again,"
Reader's Digest, August, 1996, pp. 54-59; "Who Uses GPS and
for What?" Time Service Department, U.S. Naval Observatory, http://tycho.usno.navy.mil/gps_apps.html
(17 Feb. 1997); "Cadillac Systems Integration and Engineering Preeminence,"
press release, August 14, 1995, Cadillac Motor Car Division, General Motors
Corp., Detroit, Mich. 8 Neil Singer, "Sandia team produces intelligent micromachines,"
March 15, 1996, Sandia National Research Laboratories, Albuquerque, N.M.,
http://www.sandia.gov (Dec. 17, 1996). 9 "The Human Genome: the proper study of mankind," Economist,
September 14, 1996, p. 19; Naomi Freundlich, "Die young - at an old
age," Business Week, October 7, 1996, pp. 154-156; "The
Human Genome Project: From Maps to Medicine," U.S. Department of Health
and Human Services, Public Health Service, National Institutes of Health,
NIH Publication No. 96-3897. 10 For other examples of recent technological progress, see "Measuring
atoms: micro, nano, pico, femto," Economist, October 14, 1995,
pp. 98-99; John Carey, "Science's New Nano Frontier," Business
Week, July 1, 1996, pp. 101-102; "Sowing cells, growing organs,"
Economist, January 6, 1996, pp. 65-66. 11 Authors' own ranking based on the extent to which the invention is
subsequently connected to other inventions or industries. For a discussion
of the subject, see James Burke, Connections (Boston: Little, Brown
and Company, 1978). 12 For a list of inventions and their dates, see W. Michael Cox and Richard
Alm, "The Service Sector: Give It Some Respect," Annual Report,
Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, 1994, Exhibit 10, "Tools of the Ages,"
p.15, and Peter North, The Wall Chart on Science and Invention (New
York: Dorset Press, 1991). 13 U.S. Bureau of the Census, Statistical Abstract of the United States,
various issues; Historical Statistics of the United States: Colonial
Times to 1970, Part I, 1975; Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association,
"Wireless Growth Sets New Annual Records," media release, September
19, 1996; and The World Almanac Book of Facts 1997, ed. Robert Famighetti
(Mahwah, N.J.: World Almanac Books, 1996). 14 William D. Nordhaus, "Do real output and real wage measures capture
reality? The history of light suggests not," Yale Cowles Foundation
Discussion Paper No. 1078, September 1994. 15 Michael J. Boskin, prepared statement in "Consumer price index:
hearings before the Committee on Finance, United States Senate," Senate
Hearing 104-69, U.S. Government Printing Office, 1995, pp. 109-115. 16 U.S. researchers, say, can travel in seconds from Ukraine to the U.K.
in cyberspace at virtually no cost, whereas alternative modes of travel
would cost thousands of dollars. As living standards rise, the needs fulfilled
are more intangible. 17 John P. Robinson and Ann Bostrom, "The overestimated workweek?
What time diary measures suggest," Monthly Labor Review, No.
117, August 1994, pp. 11-23. 18 For a discussion of the changing nature of progress itself, see C. Owen Paepke, The Evolution of Progress (New York: Random House, 1993).