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From foods to fads, from business techniques to books, things and ideas American are thus being bought, sold, used, admired and copied all over the world. Yet to jump to the conclusion that the world is becoming Americanized because of this—as disapproving foreign esthetes and uncritical Americans frequently do—would be to take a very bad jump indeed. Despite the admiration for and aping of things American, "Americanization" frequently has little directly to do with the U.S. as a nation; it represents more a desire for the things that Americans have, a thrust toward material wealth that is independent of nationality. In differing contexts and dozens of languages, it may mean modernization, urbanization or even the adaptation of products or techniques invented or manufactured by Britons or Swedes.
The world is in the midst of the greatest technological advance in its history—and the U.S. has been in the vanguard of that advance. As Gertrude Stein observed, the U.S. is the world's oldest country because it was really the first to enter the 20th century. It was the first to develop electric signs, skyscrapers, the conveyer belt and the computer. It was first with traffic jams, modern central heating and indoor plumbing, first with the airplane and the telephone, first with a radio, automobile, refrigerator, and a TV and washing machine cheap enough for every workingman. Much of the world has reached out for these things, not necessarily because they are American but because they are the symbols of the economic and social advances of a new era.
"Amerika, du hast es besser [America, you have it better]," said Goethe 145 years ago, and the world today looks to the U.S. as the pinnacle of material prosperity. In seeking the creature comforts of the modern age, other nations consider it incidental that most of the goods can be obtained most cheaply and efficiently in ways and styles designed by the Yanks. Says Britain's leading Americanologist, Sir Denis Brogan: "What is called Americanization in the rest of the world is largely modern industrialization. America is the chief modern industrialized society, in all the things that means in the last third of the 20th century, from automation to urbanization to mass affluence." "No other country in the world," adds Italian Designer Emilio Pucci, "applies scientific discovery as fast as America does. America thus is leading a new way of life. It has caused a thirst for novelty in all fields, and this thirst is contagious."
The Fundamentals of Technology
Placed by history and circumstance in the vanguard of the technological revolution, the U.S. also found itself carrying the results of that revolution abroad through the accidents of history. It first displayed its wealth to the world when it was recognized as an international power in the wake of World War I. But it was not until after World War II that the U.S. really began to lead a worldwide march toward affluence. By then, it was abundantly equipped for the job. It had a wealth of natural resources, a scarcity of skilled labor that forced the pace of mechanization, and an immense domestic market that permitted cheap mass production, provided customers for almost any speculative scheme.