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TECHNOLOGY IN POSTWAR AMERICA CARROLL PURSELL TECHNOLOGY IN POSTWAR AMERICA A History COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS NEW YORK Columbia University Press Publishers Since 1893 New York Chichester, West Sussex Copyright © 2007 Columbia University Press All rights reserved Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Pursell, Carroll W. Technology in postwar America : a history / Carroll Pursell. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-231-12304-4 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Technology—United States—History. 2. Technology—Social aspects I. Title. T21.P83 2007 609.73—dc22 2007001753 Every effort has been made to fi nd and credit all holders of copyright for material included in this book. For further information please write the author c/o Columbia University Press. Columbia University Press books are printed on permanent and durable acid-free paper. Printed in the United States of America c 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 For Matt & Becky contents Introduction ix 1. arsenal of democracy 1 2. the geography of everywhere 2o 3. foreign aid and advantage 39 4. the atom and the rocket 59 5. factories and farms 78 6. “it’s fun to live in america” 98 7. brain drain and technology gap 118 8. from technology drunk . . . 134 9. . . . to technology sober 155 10. a wired environment 174 11. standing tall again 193 12. globalization, modernity, and the postmodern 212 Notes 231 Bibliography 259 Index 271 introduction In 1941, media mogul Henry Luce, founder of both Life and Time maga- zines, famously proclaimed the American Century, calling on the Ameri- can people “to accept wholeheartedly our duty and our opportunity as the most powerful and vital nation in the world and in consequence to exert upon the world the full impact of our infl uences.”1 Six decades later, Luce’s “duty” and “opportunity” came to look very imperial indeed, as America came to be known as the “homeland,” and its culture, including its technology, had been projected onto the rest of the world. As the world’s only superpower, the United States devised and supported a regime of technology that both convinced and compelled its own citizens, as well as distant peoples, to adjust to a globalized economy, culture, and political order designed to be very much in the American nation’s favor. The fl owering of consumer technologies at home was intimately connected to those that allowed the country to pursue its interests around the world. I have set out to tell a story about American technology since World War II: how it changed, why it took the form it did, and what it has meant to the country. When people say that we live in a technological age, they speak truly, but human beings have always lived in a technological age. Technology is, after all, one of the defi nitions of what it means to be human. In recent times, however, technology seems to have become an agent that has radically transformed our lives. This book, then, is about the machines and processes that have loomed so large in our lives over the past half a century. But to say that this book is about technology in late twentieth–century America begs more questions than it answers, and the trouble begins with the word “technology” itself. As a number of observers have pointed out, it is essentially an empty term, imbued with different meanings to meet different needs. Leo Marx has noted that the word itself is a rather recent invention, in- troduced in the early twentieth century as machines and processes were more