policy - The Black Vault

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THE BDM CORPORATION
* Sudden advances in the communication fields through the development
of television and advances in computers and telephone
technology.
e The development of the interstate highway systems and vast expansion
of commercial airlines which allowed rapid travel throughout
the nation.
These developments were indicative of thoroughgoing change that was taking
place in American society. Personal opportunities grew and popular expectations
increased. The growing wealth of the general population in the
postwar period allowed greater freedom of choice.6/ More Americans-chose
to move to the suburbs. Between 1950 and 1970 the number of suburban
"dwellers expanded rapidly.7/ Because of the availability of cheap fuel for
automobile transportation and the development of the interstate highway
system, the suburbs of the old central cities expanded into the countryside
until they began to meet each other and form vast population centers that
were dubbed megalopolises.8/ By the 1960s, service and white collar jobs
increased while the percentages of bue collar and farm jobs shrank.9/
These societal changes were evidence that the United States was
entering a new age which some called "a new American Revolution."l0/ This
revolution created a new technological culture which had distinct characteristics.
They included:
(1) More goods produced at less cost thereby freeing labor for work
other than production of goods
(2) The development of a new class of engineers and technicians
(3) Emphasis upon functional relations and quantitative analysis
(4) Transportation and communications systems that increase economic
and social dependence
(5) Rapidly changing esthetic perceptions of space and time ll/
In the early 1960s the old power elite which had dominated the United
States during and after World War II was being challenged by a new elite
that was associated with the new scientific-defense industries of the west
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