I have been reading your previews of the book (already ordered months ago) as they appear.
Relating to your identification of 1870 as the takeoff point, something that has always struck me is that you can look at almost any industry in that period and be astonished by how quickly various final products went from small and simple to gigantic and complex, across many different final products. From USS Monitor to USS Arizona in less than fifty years, from the V-2 to the Saturn V in about twenty years, from the Wright Brothers to the B-29 in less than forty years.
I am not sure of what all the drivers of that kind of gigantism were--bigger bomber, bigger bombload, of course--but innovations in management and manufacturing processes--one of your meta-innovations--must have been essential, maybe even more than technological innovation. You need to be much better organized, and on a massive scale, when you are building B-29s than when you are building a Wright Flyer.
You ask, "Why we have done so much better to spread biomedical in public health technology around the world to increase life expectancy then spreading the technologies of high productivity around the world?"
The US spends much more than other countries on biomedical research. That coupled with the large numbers of foreign scientists who come over here for grad school or fellowships and then go back to their own country spreads the technologies. Medical technology companies are international in scope as well.
I have been reading your previews of the book (already ordered months ago) as they appear.
Relating to your identification of 1870 as the takeoff point, something that has always struck me is that you can look at almost any industry in that period and be astonished by how quickly various final products went from small and simple to gigantic and complex, across many different final products. From USS Monitor to USS Arizona in less than fifty years, from the V-2 to the Saturn V in about twenty years, from the Wright Brothers to the B-29 in less than forty years.
I am not sure of what all the drivers of that kind of gigantism were--bigger bomber, bigger bombload, of course--but innovations in management and manufacturing processes--one of your meta-innovations--must have been essential, maybe even more than technological innovation. You need to be much better organized, and on a massive scale, when you are building B-29s than when you are building a Wright Flyer.
The wayback link to Shalizi's Gellner post didn't work for me, but he still has it up on his own site: http://bactra.org/reviews/nations-and-nationalism/
You ask, "Why we have done so much better to spread biomedical in public health technology around the world to increase life expectancy then spreading the technologies of high productivity around the world?"
The US spends much more than other countries on biomedical research. That coupled with the large numbers of foreign scientists who come over here for grad school or fellowships and then go back to their own country spreads the technologies. Medical technology companies are international in scope as well.