Word: techs
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Alas, all three services are still enamored of ultra-complex, ultra- expensive weapons systems. The argument used to be that only the highest of high-tech weapons could offset the Soviets' heavy superiority in numbers -- no matter how suspect some of that Soviet power might have been. Now that the numerical superiority may be negotiated away, at least in Europe, the services are trying to find new arguments for the dollar devourers...
...Siemens-IBM venture is a welcome boost for the U.S. high-tech industry, which has suffered from a downturn in corporate spending on research and development. According to a study by the National Science Foundation, the growth in U.S. research spending in 1989 failed to keep pace with inflation for the first time since 1975. U.S. outlays rose 3.4% last year, to $68.8 billion, but inflation hit 4.6%. Among reasons for the downturn is the relatively high level of U.S. interest rates, which increases the cost of financing research, and corporate America's emphasis on short-term results...
Massive system failures dramatize the trade-off that occurs whenever a high- tech system replaces a low-tech one. Because most electronic systems are thoroughly interconnected, their failures tend to be all-or-nothing affairs. They do not, as computer scientists put it, degrade gracefully; they crash. Moreover, what is gained in speed and productivity is often lost in control, reliability and -- for lack of a better word -- transparency. When a system of gears and levers stops working, its operators can roll up their sleeves, raise the hood and go to work. When a microchip goes bad, its circuits...
...risk for businesses is not so much that their systems will someday break down -- that is almost a given -- but that lingering computer anxiety in the buying public will make it harder for firms to recoup their investments in high-tech equipment and services. Banks and brokerage houses live in fear that one or two well-publicized computer failures will alienate their customer base, triggering mass defections to their competitors...
...have no ceiling fan, then how about a Dove-Tech corn-burning stove? It's too early to tell for certain how well this really works -- only 4,000 have been sold so far -- but it sure seems to solve a lot of problems: the energy crisis (we're the Saudi Arabia of corn), the pollution crisis (the kernels burn far cleaner than wood, coal or oil), the farm crisis (Dove-Tech will even burn moldy surplus), the trade deficit (American corn, not imported oil), the deforestation crisis (chop corn, not trees), the safety crisis (corn isn't dangerous...