America's Tech Decline: a Reading Guide

ErichTheRed writes "Computerworld has put together an interesting collection of links to various sources detailing the decline of US R&D/innovation in technology. The cross section of sources is interesting — everything from government to private industry. It's interesting to see that some people are actually concerned about this...even though all the US does is argue internally while rewarding the behaviour that hastens the decline."

Comments

Re:is it just me?

[cobrausn]

A large portion of my family is machinists. We own a machine shop that makes special order components that require a lot of precision. Parts made from the shop have ended up in all manner of plants and ships, including the recent USS Reagan.

The general sentiment of my relatives that own the shop is that the US doesn't actually make much anymore - we have become more of a consumer and middleman than a producer. A lot of their competition used to be in the US, and a lot of their customers as well. Now their competition is outside the US, and their customers are more often just a middleman for overseas customers, countries that are going through their own technological / industrial renaissances. Their only real big US customers are GE and the government. They, at least, are convinced this is at least part of the reason for our recent declining relevance in industry.

Re:is it just me?

[cobrausn]

The shop is not dooing poorly at all - if anything, new technology has made the quality of product go up and revenue with it. The customer base and competition has changed.