This book is dedicated to those individuals in the U.S. Government who have begun to recognize the full implications of the challenge which this country confronts in microelectronics race, and who are beginning to take steps to deal with that challenge.

Tracing the genealogy of our physical interaction with mobile devices back to textile and needlecraft culture. For many of our interactions with digital media, we do not sit at a keyboard but hold a mobile device in our hands. We turn and tilt and stroke and tap, and through these physical interactions with an object we make things: images, links, sites, networks. In The Fabric of Interface, Stephen Monteiro argues that our everyday digital practice has taken on traits common to textile and needlecraft culture. Our smart phones and tablets use some of the same skills—manual dexterity, pattern making, and linking—required by the handloom, the needlepoint hoop, and the lap-sized quilting frame. Monteiro goes on to argue that the capacity of textile metaphors to describe computing (weaving code, threaded discussions, zipped files, software patches, switch fabrics) represents deeper connections between digital communication and what has been called “homecraft” or “women's work.” Connecting networked media to practices that seem alien to media technologies, Monteiro identifies handicraft and textile techniques in the production of software and hardware, and cites the punched cards that were read by a loom's rods as a primitive form of computer memory; examines textual and visual discourses that position the digital image as a malleable fabric across its production, access, and use; compares the digital labor of liking, linking, and tagging to such earlier forms of collective production as quilting bees and piecework; and describes how the convergence of intimacy and handiwork at the screen interface, combined with needlecraft aesthetics, genders networked culture and activities in unexpected ways.

On the basis of discussions and analysis of the current environment for international competition, this book was written to dispel misconceptions regarding the motivating forces behind internationalization and, therefore, to improve understanding of both the challenges and the opportunities of a global market and production base. Important consequences of internationalization for both manufacturers and national policy are described. The volume provides an assessment of what it takes to be successful as manufacturers and as a nation in the international competitive environment.

Global competitiveness has always been a hotly debated issue, promoting differing opinions among economists, management strategists, business leaders, and policy analysts and consultants. Global Economic Competition provides a broad framework to compare the United States economy with 23 other global economies. This is done by presenting empirical evidence in a series of comparative analyses of economic competition using data pertaining to specific countries, industries and companies. In this volume, the electronics industries are used to illustrate an ongoing economic warfare among competing regions, nations, and cluster companies across the electronic technology chain. Employing the latest empirical data to evaluate the competitiveness of the US economy and its electronic industries and companies in the 1980s and early 1990s, Global Economic Competition will be of interest not only to those who study economics, management science and international trade, but also to policy makers and business leaders.

Governments have recognized for decades the dynamic role played by microelectronics, computers, and telecommunications in the modern economy. Although Europe's deficiencies in these crucial sectors had long been acknowledged, it was not until the 1980s that European nations began collaborating to develop and promote high-tech industries. Their collaboration gives rise to many questions. Why, for example, did the joint efforts come at such a late date rather than in the 1960s or '70s? And how is it possible to work together in economically sensitive areas? These questions point to fundamental issues in the areas of international cooperation, international institutions, and technology policy. Before the institution of the collaborative programs ESPRIT (European Strategic Programme for Research and Development in Information Technology), RACE (R & D in Advanced Communications-technologies in Europe), and EUREKA (European Research Coordination Agency) in the 1980s, each European country sought its own technological renaissance through protection of national firms behind walls of technical standards, procurement preferences, and research subsidies. This thorough, carefully researched work examines the breakdown of these walls. It will appeal to political scientists, economists, and scholars of technology and Western Europe interested in the political contours of the high-tech landscape. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1992.

America's position as the source of much of the world's global innovation has been the foundation of its economic vitality and military power in the post-war. No longer is U.S. pre-eminence assured as a place to turn laboratory discoveries into new commercial products, companies, industries, and high-paying jobs. As the pillars of the U.S. innovation system erode through wavering financial and policy support, the rest of the world is racing to improve its capacity to generate new technologies and products, attract and grow existing industries, and build positions in the high technology industries of tomorrow. Rising to the Challenge: U.S. Innovation Policy for Global Economy emphasizes the importance of sustaining global leadership in the commercialization of innovation which is vital to America's security, its role as a world power, and the welfare of its people. The second decade of the 21st century is witnessing the rise of a global competition that is based on innovative advantage. To this end, both advanced as well as emerging nations are developing and pursuing policies and programs that are in many cases less constrained by ideological limitations on the role of government and the concept of free market economics. The rapid transformation of the global innovation landscape presents tremendous challenges as well as important opportunities for the United States. This report argues that far more vigorous attention be paid to capturing the outputs of innovation - the commercial products, the industries, and particularly high-quality jobs to restore full employment. America's economic and national security future depends on our succeeding in this endeavor.