Technological capacity and growth

Hilbert and Lopez^[7] identify the exponential pace of technological change (a kind of Moore's law): machines’ application-specific capacity to compute information per capita has roughly doubled every 14 months between 1986-2007; the per capita capacity of the world’s general-purpose computers has doubled every 18 months during the same two decades; the global telecommunication capacity per capita doubled every 34 months; the world’s storage capacity per capita required roughly 40 months to double (every 3 years); and per capita broadcast information has doubled roughly every 12.3 years.^[7]

VI. Conclusion

Information and communications technologies have played a unique role in the

development and success of the American economy over the last two decades. ICT industries

have grown more rapidly than any other economic sector, and the average compensation of ICT

industry workers now runs more than 80 percent more than the average for all other U.S.

industries. Moreover, ICT has been on the cutting edge of economic innovation. These

innovations have diffused across nearly every other industry, increasing efficiency and driving

additional innovations in the way other industries operate and the goods and services they

produce.

This study has measured these various effects. We found that in 2009, ICT itself was

responsible for some $600 billion in value-added, or 4.2 percent of GDP. We further found that

the ICT investments by other industries were responsible for an additional $400 billion in valueadded produced by those industries. In short, ICT generates unusually large and extensive

“spillover benefits” for other industries and their workers. All told, ICT industries in 2009 were

responsible, directly or indirectly, for the production of about $1 trillion in goods and services, or

7.1 percent of GDP in that year. Given ICT’s disproportionate impact on U.S. growth, public

policies that promote investments in ICT also would produce disproportionate benefits for the

economy.

These economic benefits also are apparent in our analysis of the impact of three ICT

related public policies. A proposed $10.7 billion public investment in an ICT-based wireless

data and communications network for police and other public safety agencies would lead to the

creation of nearly 100,000 new jobs in ICT industries alone and, over time, spillover benefits of

some $4 billion to $8 billion per-year. The $3.4 billion stimulus funding for an ICT-based

wireless data and communications network for a “Smart Grid” should directly produce nearly

30,000 new jobs and, if this funding becomes seed money for the full development of an ICTbased Smart Grid, the net benefits will range from $48 billion to $76 billion per-year. Finally, a

10 percent reduction in corporate tax burdens would spur nearly $71 billion in additional

investments in ICT goods and services by other industries. And after several years, those

increases in ICT capital would produce an additional $448 billion in annual GDP and significant

increases in compensation and/or employment in every industry. If all of these benefits went to

higher wages with no additional jobs, it would over time raise the average compensation of

This is derived from Table 6, the differences between total current compensation and total compensation after the

tax change and additional ICT investments.24

American workers by $5,424; and if all of the benefits of the additional ICT investments went to

job creation, it would over time generate more than 6.8 million additional jobs.

The critical role of ICT in the current growth and development of the U.S. economy is

also central to establishing and maintaining a comparative advantage for American companies

and workers in the global economy. ICT advances and their adoption by industries across the

U.S. economy help drive innovation in every sector. With scores of developing nations now able

to operate standard technologies and business methods at less cost than in the United States, the

American capacity to apply ICT to develop and adapt new innovations for every phase of the

economic process has become critical to U.S. competitiveness in a global economy.

About the Authors

Robert J. Shapiro is the chairman and co-founder of Sonecon, LLC, a private firm that provides

advice and analysis to senior executives and officials of U.S. and foreign businesses,

governments, and non-profit organizations. He is an internationally-known economist who has

advised, among others, President Bill Clinton, Vice President Al Gore, Jr., British Prime

Ministers Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, and U.S. Senators Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.

Currently, he is also a Senior Policy Fellow of the Georgetown University McDonough School of

Business, advisor to the International Monetary Fund, chairman of the U.S. Climate Task Force,

director of the Globalization Initiative at NDN, co-chair of American Task Force Argentina, and

a director of the Ax:son-Johnson Foundation in Sweden. Before establishing Sonecon, Dr.

Shapiro was Under Secretary of Commerce for Economic Affairs from 1997 to 2001. Prior to

that, he was co-founder and Vice President of the Progressive Policy Institute and the Progressive

Foundation. He was the principal economic advisor to Bill Clinton in his 1991-1992 campaign

and a senior economic advisor to Vice President Gore and Senator John Kerry in their

presidential campaigns. In the 2008 presidential campaign, he advised the campaign and

transition of Barack Obama. Dr. Shapiro also served as Legislative Director and Economic

Counsel for Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan; and he has been a Fellow of Harvard University,

the Brookings Institution, and the National Bureau of Economic Research. He holds a Ph.D. and

M.A. from Harvard University, a M.Sc. from the London School of Economics and Political

Science, and an A.B. from the University of Chicago

Aparna Mathur is a Resident Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, where she focuses

on tax policy, finance, technology, and health care policy issues. Dr. Mathur also is a noted

scholar in international finance and econometrics, and an affiliate analyst for Sonecon, LLC.

She has been a consultant to the World Bank, a researcher at the Tata Energy Research Institute,

and an instructor in economics at the University of Maryland. Dr. Mathur holds a Ph.D. and

M.A. from the University of Maryland, as well as degrees from Hindu College and the Delhi

School of Economics of Delhi University

The World Wide Web:

In the 1980s, the thousands of physicists at CERN Particle Physics Laboratory in Geneva needed a better way to exchange information with their colleagues working in different universities and institutes all over the world. Tim Berners-Lee, a graduate from Oxford University with 1st class Honors in Physics, invented the World Wide Web at CERN in 1990 to meet this demand. Along with creating the first web browser and web server, he developed the software conventions that are key to the Web's usefulness, with acronyms like URL (uniform resource locator) and HTTP (hypertext transfer protocol). Berners-Lee's supervisor was physicist D. M. Sendall, who gave him the initial go-ahead on the project.

Between 1990 and 1993, the Web was mostly used by scientists to collaborate their research. In 1993 it began to spread to the rest of the world, and now already the majority of Americans surf the Web. The number of websites has grown from just 130in June 1993 to around 9 million in 2002. Now over a trillion dollars worth of commerce takes place over the Internet every year! Much of this e-commerce is done over the World Wide Web. (As you may know, the terms Web and Internet do not mean the same thing. The Web, that you are surfing now, uses the Internet but is not the only communication service on it. Before the invention of the Web, few people in the general population used the Internet, but it did exist. See here and here for Berners-Lee's explanation of this.) What began as a better way for physicists to manage information and communicate--the World Wide Web--is now a vast "global information superhighway," accessible to all.

In 1999 Time magazine dubbed Berners-Lee one of the 100 greatest minds of the century. In 2004, he won the first annual Millennium Technology Prize, an "international acknowledgement of outstanding technological innovation that directly promotes people's quality of life," with an award of $1.2 million.

Some people may believe that 20th and 21st century physics research has less of a direct impact on their daily lives than biology, chemistry, engineering, and other fields. Perhaps they think of physics as an abstract, enigmatic, or purely academic endeavor. Others think that physics only contributes to national defense and medical imaging. I created this page to dispel those myths.

Nearly everyone would agree that the computer, the transistor, and the World Wide Web are among the greatest inventions of the 20th century. Economists and laymen alike know that today's entire world economy is inextricably linked to these technologies. The daily lives of a large fraction of Earth's inhabitants would be substantially different were it not for their inventions. Most would agree that America's preeminence in computer and information technology is at least partly responsible for its status as an "economic superpower." The wealth of other nations such as Japan, Taiwan, countries in Western Europe, and others is also due, in part, to their embracement of, and contributions to, the information age.

Read below to learn these little known facts: The electronic digital computer, the transistor, the laser, and even the World Wide Web were all invented by physicists. These inventions make up the foundation of modern technology.

Of course, there are many other examples of how physics research has benefited society that I do not have space to discuss here. For example, one area of active research that shows promise for broadly impacting society is superconductivity. The first "low temperature" superconductor was discovered in 1911 by physicist Kamerlingh Onnes (1913 Nobel Prize in Physics), and this class of materials was first explained mathematically in 1957 by physicists Bardeen, Cooper, and Schrieffer (1972 Nobel Prize in Physics). The first "high-temperature" superconductor was discovered in 1986 by Bednorz and M�ller (1987 Nobel Prize in Physics). As if the above prizes for research on superconductivity were not enough, the 2003 Nobel Prize in Physics is also related to superconductivity.

More than 100,000 research papers have been written on the phenomenon of high-temperature superconductivity, but still no understanding has been reached as to why they "superconduct" at the relatively "high" temperatures they do. Driven by the desire to create materials that superconduct at even higher temperatures (say room temperature), and due to the many current and potential applications, this continues to be one of the most active areas of research in physics today. It is well known that whoever figures out the correct mathematical description of high-temperature superconductivity will win a Nobel Prize as well.

Lasers:

The underlying theory of photons which made the invention of the laser possible was first developed by Albert Einstein in 1905, for which he received the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics. Here is a short biography of Einstein, the Time Magazine Person of the Century. In 1954 the first microwave laser was built by physicist Charles Townes. The first optical laser was built in 1960 by physicist Theodore Maiman. The 1964 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to Townes, Basov, and Prokhorov for their research on both microwave and optical lasers.

CD players, CD-ROMs, CD-burners, and DVD players all use lasers to read data. Without fundamental research in physics by Einstein, the inventors of the laser, and others, the CD and other applications of the laser such as fiber optics representing industries worth billions of dollars would not exist. It is ironic that, like so many other discoveries in physics, the laser was at first thought by many to have no practical uses whatsoever.

It is imperative that the federal government and private industry continue to fund fundamental research in physics so that physicists can continue to make discoveries and inventions as important as the ones they made in the past. Indeed, it would make economic sense to increase the funding. The relatively small percent of GDP that goes toward fundamental research in physics is only a tiny fraction of the trillions of dollars that inventions by physicists have contributed to the economy. Unfortunately, in the United States, the federal R&D expenditures for all physical sciences combined was only 0.7 percent of GDP in 2000. Federal funding for physics declined 20% between 1993 and 2000. If we wish to remain a prosperous, innovative nation, this trend cannot continue.

Only time will tell what the next groundbreaking invention by physicists will be, but if history is any guide, we can be sure there will be one. Perhaps it will be a quantum computer, capable of speeds millions of times faster than current computers. Or perhaps it will be a 2000 MPH levitating train, made possible by research in superconductors. But most likely, it will be something no one has thought of, yet.

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