At one time, the United States was the undisputed center of innovative technology development in the world — and the U.S. government led the charge. Because of government research, sleek cylinders carried men to the moon, and later, sleek cables carried data worldwide, a breakthrough that would come to be known as the Internet.

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Times have changed. Other countries are emerging as technology centers, and the U.S. government has stepped back from its leadership position, letting the private sector try to fill the gap. Technology has made the world flat, in the words of author Thomas Friedman, so that oceans and borders are no longer boundaries to the flow of expertise and inspiration.

This evolution has many ramifications. Some fear that the United States is losing its stature as a world leader in innovation. Others point to the profit motives of industry, saying that research without a probable commercial application is less likely to get done if government doesn’t do it.

“We are extremely good at the sales, marketing and distribution of high-tech products and services,” said Jay Jarrell, president and chief executive officer of database software developer Objectivity. “That’s where the money’s usually made — in distribution. But that doesn’t mean much if most of the products are coming out of China.”

World powers are not guaranteed dominance forever, Jarrell said. Rome and Britain are two examples of once-powerful empires that crumbled under their own weight.

The United States and “the Western world in general are becoming the historic cultures that are losing the innovative edge because of our standard of living and our educational patterns,” he said. “We’re becoming a society of servicing each other rather than innovating.”

China and India, in particular, once known for manufacturing commodity products for low wages, are rapidly becoming technology centers, said Jonathan Kestenbaum, CEO of the United Kingdom’s National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts.

“These [countries] are not anymore going to be the sweatshops of Western economies,” he said, speaking earlier this year at an event at the Progressive Policy Institute in Washington, D.C.