Dismantling Disadvantage: Women, Minorities, and Epscor States as American Egalitarian Projects

Innova tion is a great generator of inequality. The larger the role it plays in our lives, the more aware we become of the gaps it opens up. 1 Technological innovation wreaks its creative destruction through the market economy. Competition ensures that new products will be pursued and new industries appear. Old investments shrink in value, and new ones mushroom. Technological change redistributes wealth and employment, and makes new winners and new losers. Further, as innovation becomes more technological, its products also become more expensive, and its benefits are more and more likely to accrue to the wealthy rather than the poor. Cell phones and smart houses do not help the homeless. As technological opportunity comes to rest more and more on inputs from science, various groups in society become aware that their connection to the world of research matters. If they are not represented in science, then their chances of entering the technological competition are limited: they are disadvantaged. Sometimes this