Harnessing Science and Technology for America's Economic Future National and Regional Priorities (1999) / Chapter Skim
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Keynote Address by George Brown
Keynote Address by George Brown
Pages 61-66
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From page 61... ...
It is being forced upon us by the social disruption following the end of the Cold War, changes in high-technology industries, and dizzying advances in science. As an indicator of the magnitude of the change that surrounds us, I cannot let pass an observation that today's National Academy of Sciences conference on linkages between federal R&D and national economic goals is exactly the kind of conversation I sought to initiate some years ago.
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From page 62... ...
Old competitive relationships have been replaced with cooperative business ventures on a global basis that defy any attempt to determine national ownership. Product life cycles are now frequently measured in months and, combined with crazed investment fixation on quarterly profit-and-loss statements, this has forced many in the private sector to shed their long-term R&D operations and move research toward a short-term, product development focus.
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From page 63... ...
Economic well-being means one thing if we own stock in company X and has a different meaning if we are an hourly wage worker whose job is eliminated by company X's advanced technology product or a new and more efficient manufacturing process. Do we have a sufficiently complex definition to take into account all of these effects?
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From page 64... ...
Just as Edwards Deming revolutionized Japanese industry by bringing Total Quality Management to the factory floor and involving an even larger number of workers in improving quality throughout the system, we now need a new generation of Demings who will see the broader society as a system requiring quality improvements. And that new generation will include scientists, engineers, and political leaders with the vision to see and understand that a flawed society with distorted priorities and goals and underutilized human resources is a major economic burden on the productivity and stability of that society, and hence an impediment to its ability to survive and compete on a global basis.
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From page 65... ...
As the government gives a little more support and assistance to the private sector, the private sector needs to be more sensitive to public policy issues that they encounter. Here I must point out how much easier all of this would be if we still had a prudent technology assessment operation in this country, preferably imbedded in most of the major public and private institutions that impact on the future.
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From page 66... ...
We can view this process as one that starts with simple biochemical signaling within cells, moving to simple signaling between cells to produce colonies of organisms, followed by more sophisticated signaling between cells leading to the evolution of multicellular organisms, and finally signaling between organisms allowing them to organize into herds, tribes, and eventually develop into human society and culture. Today we are using S&T to link the globe in a sphere of knowledge and understanding, a global web of interconnectedness for which the new satellite telecommunication systems such as Iridium and Teledesic are an effective metaphor.
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