Most people assume the opposite...that technology follows scientific discoveries, and wealth follows when society is educated. Nassim Taleb disagrees...in this interview around about 15:20. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1NXaafTpVjM Can you debunk his theory???
Perhaps it's an iterative process involving elements of synergy and gestalt such that neither truly "follows" the other?
Without the study of the sciences you cannot have technology because you first need to research and develop something before it can be made marketable. Wealth can only be aquired by achieving scientific breakthroughs that advance or upgrade what is already being marketed. You do not need scientific breakthroughs to produce wealth as we already see with stock brokers, bond salespeople and other office workers that telemarket stuff to everyone.
The wealthy seem pretty happy keeping their knowledge in their own pockets, I doubt they want to share their management tactics to the worker class.
In any college today, the more exclusive ones that you pay high tuition costs for are the best, you can learn anything that the corporations are doing in great detail. If you want to understand anything getting an education is the best way to achieve that but on the job training is also possible whereby you can learn everything that a business does from the inside, bottom to top, which will take you longer but you can get it accomplished either way.
Nassim puts science and education together as the effects of technology and wealth. The reasoning being that gadgets and machines are invented by tinkering first...raising questions about WHY they work, and science plays catch-up trying to answer this question. The wealth yielded by technology creates the leisure time required to investigate scientific questions.
