Since Merrill Lynch, J.P. Morgan, John D. Rockefeller, and other great founders have passed away. America seems to just lie solemnly on what has happened. Apart from Bill Gates, Donald Trump, and a few others we have yet to make an impact on the world/economy as they did. Sure we made a trip to the moon..big deal. I really don't see everyone evacuating Earth and jetting to the moon in the near future. As for the "Global Warming" I personally think the name is wrong for it..it should be more along the lines of "Global Climate Change" as we get warmer here in the U.S. it's getting colder in Australia. I just really don't see with our technology and with there lack of technology back in the day how they seem to have made more advances than we have.

Maybe we became too greedy. Looks like our car makers aren't stepping up fast enough to alternatives to oil and Japan is beating the shit out of them.

I was watching an episode of modern marvels on the history channel the other day and it was about 80s technology and I realized how many things of the big gadgets we have now really came from that time and from Japan. CDs and VCRs which lead to DVDs, cell phones, etc...
The only real major one that came from the U.S. to some extent was the personal computer. It seems like everything we call high tech now is really just a faster, smaller, and improved version of things that really started to first catch on 20-30 years ago and many of those truely first came in to being before that. We really advanced during the industrial revolution and such but in the last few decades we have really become a service economy that simply improves on old ideas and makes thing more efficient rather than coming up with anything new. They say necessity is the mother of all invention and maybe we are just too comfortable now. I think the whole things about cutting cost and increasing efficiency is because companies can concentrate on that and increase profits rather than actually making something new which takes even more research and development.

__________________
"Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

Exactly how many great minds of an era do you expect?

You point out Merrill Lynch, J P Morgan and Rockefeller and then seem somehow to think that the existence of Bill Gates, Donald Trump, Warren Buffet, Larry Ellison, and others dont even count.

Lynch, Morgan, et. al. were the captains of industry in their day just as Gates and Ellison would be today.

I really dont understand what your post is supposed to mean. Are you complaining that no one looks at Gates with the same nostalgia they look at Morgan? Of course they dont! Gates is still quite alive!

I also fail to see how you think the US hasnt made many advances. Sure, we went to the moon..(you write that off like it is an everyday occurance), but lets see...what else do we have...hm....how about the IC chip? Thats kinda a biggie. Without it, you wouldnt have a computer. What else? Hm...how far back you want to go?

Every major and most minor advances in the computer industry have come out of the US. Then there are other little industries such as telecommunications, aerospace, chemical, pharmaceutical, etc. The US contributions in these areas are hardly trivial.

What has Austrailia given the world, since you think its better than the US. Lets see...we've got Crocodile Dundee and Fosters. Thats pretty well about it.

How old are you son? I am guessing about 16 with that kind of incredible insight.

__________________
In case you were wondering, yes, there really ARE more idiots these days....technology has made natural selection obsolete.

Many of those devices came from Japan, but much of the technology was developed here.

Now i'll grant you that the US has not exactly been living up to its standards, but to claim we have had no contributions is short-sighted at best.

__________________
In case you were wondering, yes, there really ARE more idiots these days....technology has made natural selection obsolete.

What has Austrailia given the world, since you think its better than the US. Lets see...we've got Crocodile Dundee and Fosters. Thats pretty well about it.
-EricOKC

Never did I or would i tempt to say that Australia is better than America. I gave credit to Bill Gates. But what I am saying is that we cease to come up with new inventions we just improve on what the pioneers of the Industrial Revolution gave us. Buffet made money through the stock market, kinda relates to what where I am coming from. Sure he did his thing but, all he did was build on what he had learned from the past. As for space technology..tell me where do you think that is going.

Fair enough on Austrailia. I misread it. My mistake.

As far as space tech, what do you want from it? It took us thousands of years to even get into space, and in an extremely short span we have gone to the moon and sent probes to other planets. Did you expect advances in leaps and bounds? Are we supposed to be colonizing Mars by now?

__________________
In case you were wondering, yes, there really ARE more idiots these days....technology has made natural selection obsolete.

No to the colonizing thing, but the government is just wasting our money on pointless things...we can't live there. There is no oxygen, the land is infertile, and it most definately isn't big enough. Personally I say we let Russia spend there money on it and when they somehow make it livable we follow in pursuit.If I had a choice I would put my money into researching the Ocean it's closer and yet we still no less about it than space. But back to the topic of how OUR COUNTRY has settled with just improving past time inventions...and ceased originality.

I wasn't aware that making gobs and gobs of money is the only sign of intelligence.

__________________
"Jesus said: I have cast fire upon the world, and behold I guard it until it is ablaze."
Gospel of Thomas

Never did I quote that having money is a sign of intelligence. I'm not degrading the US. I'm just promoting an issue that I think people should be concerned about.

I never said that. I'm just pointing out that we are not as supreme as many think. We have many things that we have contributed but so have many other countries. While we may seem to be more advanced in some areas we lack in others. Education comes to mind. I am not trying to put down the U.S. but I am trying to say we are only part of the humanity and not the only one that matters.

__________________
"Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

I believe the tv show was mistaken. Wouldn't that be an historic first!

Actually these were invented in the west, but mass produced in the east. Japan follows the teachings of Demming on Quality which makes them competitive. The West still excells in creative design.

One area where Japan do excell is robotics... an outgrowth of their automated production.

Japanese high schools stress rote memorization instead of creative thinking. That does not promote creativity.

__________________
Free speech for all.

Without them we wouldn't have them cheap enough for average people to own them which is what has impacted our lives. So it took both of us which is my point. We do contribute much but they had just as much a part of these things changing our everyday lives as we did.

__________________
"Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

Hmmm, let me think - Australia created the bionic ear; a little thing called penicillin; plastic bags; pace-makers; ultrasound; IVF; black-box flight recorders used in planes; scramjet engines; electric drills; latex gloves; bullet-proof glass; the technology used in photocopying; anti-fraud polymer bank notes; refrigeration; the world's first vaccine to prevent cervical cancer; spray on skin; freestyle swimming (which was originally called the Australian Crawl); plus many, many, many more. We also created the winged keel used in yachting which kicked your butt in the 1983 America's Cup .

Perhaps you might like to think a bit more in future before you speak (or type in this case), and provide such baseless throw-away lines.

I feel that the lack of interest and 'umph behind it is the reason we have stagnated as a society, or at least part of the reason. I feel that our biggest enemy is apathy and lack of vision. Another poster I agree almost exactly that we've not been exploring new frontiers and have had all the time in the world to consume ourselves more and more which gets us nowhere. We don't know enough about a planet like say, Mars for example, to determine whether humans could make it there. The mars oxygen is not as free as Earth oxygen, though numerous anaerobic bacteria on earth is about do just as much as it could on Mars (which we know exists.) Growing food in greenhouses would very well be possible on Mars. Exploring ways to colonize Mars or elsewhere would no doubt be the most difficult thing that humanity has ever pursued. In my opinion, it's very risky to keep the consciousness of humanity bound to one planet; it could be wiped out. But, I can understand the apathy of many in regards to the colonizing space and exploring it.