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main indefinitely in tlie environment. A further cost or hazard results 

 from agricultural simplification — ^the reduced variety of crops — such 

 that any attacking blight or pest that technology cannot control might 

 wipe out a large fraction of the Nation's food supply. 



Technology of health and medical practice has imposed increasing 

 burdens of knowledge on medical practitioners and increased costs on 

 those treated, as well as on society at large. The same problem of infor- 

 mation overload confronts technologists in most other fields ; indeed, 

 the public at large is exposed to more choices, more solicitation and 

 appeals for attention, and more stimuli, than ever before. 



As standards of material well-being in such affluent countries as the 

 United States, Japan, the Scandinavian countries, and those of West- 

 ern Europe, continue to rise, their condition becomes the source of 

 envy and the target of the aspirations of less developed countries of 

 the world. Defects perceived by the developed countries in their own 

 technologies tend to be discounted by those less developed. 



Continued growth of technology and productivity, with their con- 

 current imperfections and environmental effects, cannot reasonably 

 be expected to go on indefinitely. In countries with less advanced tech- 

 nologies and production systems, the United States is today a much- 

 admired model for emulation. Global growth in the uses and defects of 

 technology is in prospect, strongly supported by positive programs for 

 the export of U.S. technology and by the efforts of the less-developed 

 countries to increase their own technological sophistication through 

 schools, universities, and institutes. The impacts of this growth on a 

 finite world are sobering; to the extent that adverse effects of technol- 

 ogy are attributed to the United States as the foremost technological 

 nation, the consequences of this technological leadership seem to pose 

 awkward problems for future diplomacy. However, for the present, 

 the main theme is one of enthusiastic emulation. 



National Infrastructures of Technological Growth 



The rate at which a nation's technology grows, intensifies, integrates, 

 and comes to dominate its culture, depends in large measure on a com- 

 bination of foundational elements or "infrastructure." Marked differ- 

 ences are evident among nations as to the completeness with which 

 this infrastructure is developed, and accordingly as to their relative 

 prospects for rapid teclinological advance. The extent of attention 

 given to this infrastructure, historically, seems to have been more acci- 

 dental than consciously directed. However, since about 1955, there has 

 been a growing appreciation of the importance of the infrastructure 

 for the evolution and strengthening of a nation's technology. 



Infrastructure encompasses many elements. A nation must be able 

 to feed itself, for example, but unless the productivity of its agri- 

 culture is such that one family can feed several by its efforts, there 

 will be no food available for those who leave the farm for the urban 

 factory or to sell abroad to buy machinery with. In the United States, 

 a single farm worker — statistically — feeds something like 30 to 40 

 persons. To increase agricultural productivity requires mechanizatioia, 

 agricultural science, and capital; this set of requirements in turn 

 suggests the need for credit institutions, agricultural training pro- 

 grams, research institutes (to provide information pertinent to the 

 crops produced in the country concerned), an agricultural marketing 

 system, and so on. Other elements of infrastructure are arrangements 



