Palo Alto: A History of California, Capitalism, and the World Highlight

Computerization didn’t add enough efficiency to the country’s classic manufacturing processes to keep them competitive. The U.S. tech strategy failed miserably in Vietnam, particularly as it was applied in strategic bombing and in the military’s effort to use sensors to render the battlespace calculable—never mind the LSD. The rapid Soviet ascent in science and technology, culminating in Sputnik, proved that there wasn’t anything special or inherently faster about the capitalist developmental road.