What factors made America unique even after the closing of the frontier?
SEYMOUR MARTIN LIPSET: I think the new machines, the consumption patterns, the automobile which was coming in; the telephone opened the door to communications. We talk of the [Inter]net doing the same thing. People could call each other up, people could speak not only within the city, but one city to another, across the country. And that changed distances, it changed the nature of social relationships, of friendships, of families, and just as the [Inter]net does now in different ways. And of course, advertising [is also] something which I think was uniquely American, or at least something which came about here earlier. Advertisers make you want more. They tell you life can be better. And [this] demand [gave rise to], a whole flock of new inventions which occurred in the early twentieth century, just as we’re having this tremendous pace of new developments today. And again, the United States leads in the rate of innovation. [Another one of the areas where] the United States is unique in
