Perspectives on Technology consists of papers written by Nathan Rosenberg over a ten-year period, from the early 1960s to the early 1970s. Their origin was in Professor Rosenberg's interest in long-term economic growth processes and, especially, in the behaviour of industrializing societies. The form and direction which this book has taken reflect two basic (1) a growing awareness of the centrality of technological phenomena in generating economic growth, and (2) a growing sense that, in spite of the basic and genuine insights into technological phenomena provided by the neo-classical economics, a deeper and richer understanding of the phenomena can only be achieved by a willingness to step outside the limited intellectual boundaries of this mode of reasoning.
Dr. Nathan Rosenberg was an economist who specialized in the history of technology.
Rosenberg received Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin in 1955, and taught at Indiana University (1955–1957), the University of Pennsylvania (1957–1961), Purdue University (1961–1964), Harvard University (1967–1969), the University of Wisconsin (1969–1974), and then Stanford University until his retirement.