Windows on a New World

The First Industrial Revolution of the eighteenth century brought fundamental changes in the allocation of people, resources, and energy. In the Second Industrial Revolution, the revolutionary impact of automobiles, photography, electric power, and industrial chemicals made the United States a foremost world power. The Third Industrial Revolution begins with the information revolution brought about by the computer. Each decade since World War II has brought crucial developments in the areas of CAD/CAM, fiber optics, lasers, holography, biogenetics, bioagriculture, and telecommunications. The synergy of these new scientific/industrial areas will change our way of life for the next five decades and beyond.

Windows on a New World attempts to integrate some of these outstanding changes. Nine chapters, each written by a specialist in the field, deal with the most important topics relevant to microprocessors, lasers, telecommunications, manufacturing, management, biotechnology, and biophysics. Throughout the volume other important areas are mentioned such as holography, bioagriculture, ceramics, and superconductors. Each contribution shapes the basic science of the subject and then goes beyond to raise pertinent questions and suggest reverberations. The work ends with an overview of the consequences of these changes. Finkelstein's thesis is that the United States, richly endowed by nature, fashioned through its history and people the most successful economy the world has known. At the end of the nineteenth century it put into place both a private and an academic structure that gave it preeminence in the world of industrial product development. That world is changing. It is being rebuilt and restructured by new and incredibly important breakthroughs. Change and uncertainty are our constant companions. For those who see this as negatve and frightening, he argues that the industrial revolutions of the past lifted the world from poverty and offered new opportunities for millions of people. If this is the end of an era, it is also the beginning of a new one. A study that broadens our understanding of a complex series of developments, this extraordinary work will be read with interest by economists, politicians, scientists, historians and all others involved in the fields of business and technology.

JOSEPH FINKELSTEIN is Professor of History and Economics and of Industrial Administration and Management at the Graduate Management Institute at Union College. He is co-author of Economists and Society: The Development of Economic Thought from Aquinas to Keynes.