Percy Spencer, an American engineer and expert in radar tube design who helped develop radar for combat, looked for ways to apply that technology for commercial use after the end of the war. The common story told claims that Spencer took note when a candy bar he had in his pocket melted as he stood in front of an active radar set. Spencer began to experiment with different kinds of food, such as popcorn, opening the door to commercial microwave production. Putting this wartime technology to use, commercial microwaves became increasingly available by the 1970s and 1980s, changing the way Americans prepared food in a way that persists to this day. The ease of heating food using microwaves has made this technology an expected feature in the twenty first century American home.
More than solely changing the way Americans warm their food, radar became an essential component of meteorology. The development and application of radar to the study of weather began shortly after the end of World War II. Using radar technology, meteorologists advanced knowledge of weather patterns and increased their ability to predict weather forecasts. By the 1950s, radar became a key way for meteorologists to track rainfall, as well as storm systems, advancing the way Americans followed and planned for daily changes in the weather.
Technology and demographics changing work forever
Of all the scientific and technological advances made during World War II, few receive as much attention as the atomic bomb. Developed in the midst of a race between the Axis and Allied powers during the war, the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki serve as notable markers to the end of fighting in the Pacific. While debates over the decision to use atomic weapons on civilian populations continue to persist, there is little dispute over the extensive ways the atomic age came to shape the twentieth century and the standing of the United States on the global stage. Competition for dominance propelled both the United States and the Soviet Union to manufacture and hold as many nuclear weapons as possible. From that arms race came a new era of science and technology that forever changed the nature of diplomacy, the size and power of military forces, and the development of technology that ultimately put American astronauts on the surface of the moon.
Growth of labor, capital, and technology. 2. Is it possible for an economy to continue growing forever solely by accumulating more capital? No. 3. How does an increase in the saving rate affect economic growth? A higher saving rate does not permanently affect the growth rate in the Solow model. A higher saving rate does result in a higher steady-state capital stock and a higher level of output. The shift from a lower to a higher steady-state level of output causes a temporary increase in the growth rate. In some newer theories of growth, a higher saving rate may permanently raise the rate of economic growth. These newer theories have not been subjected to rigorous empirical testing, however. 4. How does an increase in the population growth rate affect economic growth? In the Solow model, an increase in the population growth rate raises the growth rate of aggregate output but has no permanent effect on the growth rate of per capita output. An increase in the population growth rate lowers the steady-state level of per capita output. 5. What explains the long-run growth of per capita GDP? Technical progress, which in turn stimulates growth of the capital stock. 6. Why do countries like the United States, Germany, and Japan all seem to be converging to the same level of per capita GDP? They have similar technologies and are converging to similar per-capita stocks of capital. 7. Why don’t all countries converge to the same level of per capita GDP as the United States, Germany, and Japan? Some countries seem to have different levels of technology (interpreted broadly to include factors like political stability, the legal system, the security of property rights, the ability to enforce contracts, etc.). 8. How does an increase in the tax rate on income from capital affect economic growth? In the Solow model, the capital income tax rate has no permanent effect on the growth rate of output. An increase in the capital income tax rate lowers the saving rate, however. The effects of a change in the saving rate are discussed in question 3 above. Show review questions without answers
I've worked on, advised and evaluated educational technology projects in dozens of countries over the past fifteen years, mainly in middle and low income countries. As anyone who works intimately with information and communication technologies (ICTs) on a daily basis knows, change is a constant when working in the technology sector. (In contrast, while rhetoric about change is a constant in the education sector, change itself is much slower in coming ....) While the technologies themselves may change quite often, though, many of the most common questions related to their introduction and use remain largely the same.
I remember working with teachers in Ghana in the late 1990s as part of a pilot initiative to introduce computers and the Internet into a select number of schools in a few of the major cities. Towards the end of the third day of a five day workshop, we had a teacher show up at the door to our classroom, apologizing for his tardiness and asking if he could join the course. He explained that he had traveled for a few days to reach the small school outside Accra where out training activity was taking place, hitching rides on trucks and then transferring between long haul buses, because he had heard about this thing called the Internet that was going to "change education forever" and just had to see it for himself. Given how many people had wanted to take the course, we had a strict policy not to allow latecomers into the workshop, but we waived it for this gentlemen, because we were so taken by his story and by the hardship he had endured to join us.
Note that the type of resistance I am talking about here is of a very basic, initial, almost instinctive nature. It is not the resistance of teachers who, for example, have worked in a system where computers have already been introduced, with negligible or even negative effect, and who thus look on educational technology initiatives with a very skeptical, jaundiced eye. It is not the resistance of teachers who see the introduction of yet more technology as the lamentable enabler of more (and more! and more!) standardized testing. Nor am I talking about worries about wages (Will we be paid more if we are expected to learn these new 'computer skills'?) or changes in related expectations and job responsibilities (Will we be expected to do or accomplish more, or something for which we have not been trained, now that we have these new gadgets?).
In no education system around the world where I have worked has the introduction of new technologies made teachers less vital or central to the teaching and learning process. On the contrary: As dust settles after new equipment arrives in schools (and eventually begins to work, more or less), and the initial hype around the potential for quick 'transformational change' subsides, the role of the teacher is almost always more central, indeed fundamental, than it was before the introduction of technology.
New technologies can, and no doubt eventually will, replace many of the routine administrative tasks typically handled by teachers, like taking attendance, entering marks into a grading book, etc. (That said, in the short run, administrative burdens on teachers often increase in practice in the short term as a result of increased technology use. I once visited a school in Russia where, in a scenario that seemed to me a pointed example of pointless bureaucratic inefficiency enabled by the introduction of new technologies, frustrated teachers had been required to enter student test scores both manually on paper forms and electronically for many months, 'until the kinks are worked out of this new system".) Standing at the blackboard in front of the class and methodically writing out dates to memorize and new vocabulary to learn -- such manual activities can often be done much more expeditiously (if perhaps not always more effectively) through using projectors and basic presentation software. Machines (perhaps even "teaching machines") may also handle some of the routine, low-end cognitive tasks (e.g. posing multiple-choice questions and grading tests) that teachers currently perform.
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