I am not commenting this as some sort of social scientist who has all the statistics and research on this.<p>I can only really speak about the experiences of my own country Norway. When I listen to people of my grandparents and parents generation it is evident that engineers and scientists were held in high esteem in their days. This is what boys often dreamed of being. Fathers of my parents generation would push talented kids to become engineers, architects etc.<p>In my parents generation these perceptions took a major change. E.g. my mother was a journalists which was not regarded very highly at all but which became very sought after in my generation.<p>If you look at media both in Norway and other western countries you see a clear utopian perspective where technology solves all sorts of problems for society. Think of the view on rocket engineers and atomic engineers in the 50s and 60s. Scientists and engineers come across as the heroes in the 50s and 60s.<p>As one gets into the 70s, there is a drastic shift and science and engineering seems to suddenly turn into the source of societies problems rather than the source of its solutions. You see the beginnings of an anti-technology political movement. All the pollution and urban problems that developed in the 60s and onwards is blamed on technology and science. With the hippies you get this sort of back to nature ideas.<p>Think about the Jetsons, and American cars which looked like they had rocket boosters. All the illustrated science magazines that popped up. Surely there was a technology optimism in earlier days you can trace in adds, TV shows and what not that simply does not exist today.<p>To me China looks like the 1960s west. You can even see the faint beginnings of the counter culture, where people are increasingly alarmed about all the pollution and environmental destruction.