The Technology Edge: Opportunities for America in World Competition

by Gerard K. O'Neill

From Simon & Schuster and Gerard K. O'Neill, author of The High Frontier and 2081 , comes The Technology Edge , an exploration into the opportunities for America in world competition.

Leading business and economic expert Gerard K. O'Neill uses his latest book, The Technology Edge to cover the new opportunities for America in the world competition.

300 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1983

About the author

Gerard Kitchen O'Neill (February 6, 1927 – April 27, 1992) was an American physicist and space activist. As a faculty member of Princeton University, he invented a device called the particle storage ring for high-energy physics experiments. Later, he invented a magnetic launcher called the mass driver. In the 1970s, he developed a plan to build human settlements in outer space, including a space habitat design known as the O'Neill cylinder. He founded the Space Studies Institute, an organization devoted to funding research into space manufacturing and colonization. His award-winning book The High Frontier: Human Colonies in Space inspired a generation of space exploration advocates. (Wikipedia)

Reviews

[Liquidlasagna · Rating 1 out of 5]

Rejecting the "limits to growth" philosophy common to the 1970s, O'Neill points out that technological advances have historically created wealth for those societies with the foresight to develop them. He examines in detail six vast new markets that, if agggressively pursued, could sustain high levels of economic growth for the United States for many decades - microengineering, robotic reproduction, genetic hardware, magnetic flight, private aircraft flight and space manufacturing. Suggests that to conquer these markets long-term corporate growth and not short-term profits must be stressed, the adversarial relationship between labor and management must be superseded by cooperation, and venture capital investment must be encouraged.

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genetic engineering maglev train blah blah blah

O'Neill was interesting for particle physics and space technology

but i'm not sure he had a very good handle on being realistic at all with economics or technology application