Chapter 12 - Loose change

Abstract

This chapter concludes the narrative tour through the maze that has characterized American science and technology policy for more than 225 years. The author revisits the major policy trends through the decades and makes the case that science and technology policy has shaped the nation and the world as we know it. The chapter emphasizes that, in addition to marshaling facts, data, analyses and forecasts, science policy achieves its greatest successes when it has applied political savvy, exploited personal relationships, and timed its efforts effectively, as indicated in many of the stories told in the earlier chapters. Several case histories are used to make policy points. The chapter spends considerable time on the story of Bell Laboratories, its wildly successful run of technology successes over decades, and the ultimate Bell System breakup; the author believes that the culture of Bell Labs reflected a critical characteristic of modern science and technology that was not well appreciated at the time, namely how complex the relationships are among basic research, applied research, innovation and development. This leads to a discussion of various models of how scientific advances move from basic research to new technology, including Donald Stokes’s Quadrant Model.