Jim Bauerle and the Railroad

Jim Bauerle, the banking expert in Keevican, Weiss, Bauerle, &  Hirsch, writes a periodical on the banking industry. A recent article on the Fed and QE included this assessment of the diverse impact of technology on varied recipients:

"I recently reread The Railway Journey: The Industrialization of Time and Space in the 19th Century. A mid-1970's study of technological transformation, this monograph by German scholar Wolfgang Schivelbusch not only chronicles the impact of emerging technologies like the railroad and telegraph, but contrasts Europeans' and Americans' experiences with them. In Europe, he says, railroads were a disruptive technology that forced people to reframe their experience of place and time. The experience of place was simultaneously expanded via greater accessibility and contracted via greater familiarity and economic and social integration. Think German unification under Bismark.  

          In the United States, railroads were a liberating technology that allowed a small population to conquer a new (to them) and large continent, radically increase their prosperity, and establish political and economic hegemony. In Europe, labor was plentiful but tangible assets like land were scarce. In the U.S., the opposite was true. In both locales, this influenced how and where railroads were constructed. Although Schivelbusch doesn't say it, capital too was plentiful in Europe but not in the U.S., necessitating Junius Morgan (father of J.P.) and other U.S. bankers' going to London and Berlin to fund U.S. railroad construction. Many parallels can be found to how computer technology is currently being integrated in developed and developing economies (e.g., Brazil, Russia, India and China)."