The Power of TECHNOLOGY.

• Author: Fountain, Henry
• Position: Brief Article

Imagine for a moment that in 1900, the United States had disappeared. Simply vanished, along with its people. Gobbled up by a black hole, say, in one of those scenarios that Star Trek scriptwriters love to envision.

What would the world be like a century later?

It might be one without airplanes, invented by the Wright Brothers of Ohio. One without electronic computers, the brainchild of a slew of Americans, from Presper Eckert to Steve Jobs. Without so much as a transistor for the innards of a radio, or the plastic for its shell. Without CAT scans and the polio vaccine. Without photocopiers, vacuum cleaners, air conditioners, even paper clips.

In science and technology, in ways big and small, the 20th century was America's century. Without Americans, cars would exist, but a host of improvements, including mundane features like motorized windshield wipers, would not. And rockets would exist, but humans might not have landed on the moon or sent a telescope into orbit capable of seeing the outer...