ABSTRACT
Industrial capitalism extended beyond manufacturing to reorganize agricultural production and even information industries such as publishing, today digital capitalism has gripped every sector. This chapter foregrounds the place of science and engineering within this encompassing transition. Science has played a vital role in capitalist development historically. Worldwide IT spending, in one estimate, came in at over $3.5 trillion in 2015. The banking and security industries topped the IT spending list with over $486 billion, closely followed by the manufacturing and natural resources industries with almost $477 billion. For some time, the tech industry has led a larger corporate campaign to address what it presents as a shortage of skilled labor, charging that this deficit threatens to damage US competitiveness. Digital capitalism remains vulnerable to the violent shocks and downturns that have typified capitalist development throughout its history.
