Search Results

This chapter explores how information flow can be controlled to prevent other countries from gathering information and using it for their own improvement. It starts by considering technology and world domination before the end of the Second World War. Technologies at this point in time were limited to the military. However, information transfers were still possible. This led to the Bucy Report of the U.S. Department of Defense, which best illustrates the effectiveness of the means by which Western technology information flow to the Soviet Union was blocked. The chapter emphasizes that information should have been protected on the manufacturing level to ‘slow the pace’ at which the Soviets could produce new products. Since then this argument was applied, especially to the technologies discovered by the United States, which is further demonstrated in the East-West technology gap.

Based on research in the warabandi and shejpali systems of irrigation prevalent in north-west and western India, this chapter proposes due consideration of technology in policy and institutional reforms in large-scale canal irrigation. Warabandi and shejpali represent two forms of water allocation corresponding to different technologies or design of canal irrigation systems. The chapter explores how the potential for market creation, redefinition of water rights, and decentralization varies in these systems. Though these three options are often considered as alternative approaches to irrigation management reform, they are rarely considered together or in relation to each other. Further, in most discussions of these, technology is a black box. How the potential of reform through these three approaches is shaped by the technology and systems of water allocation receives scant attention. This chapter makes a case for mainstreaming discussions of technology in proposals for irrigation management reform.

The central paradox of modern economic growth in Mexico is the contrast between a tidal wave of technological imports—adopted and sometimes widely diffused—and a stubbornly persistent dependence on foreign know-how and hardware. Technological imports may alter the nature of work, boost productive output, and yield new sets of winners and losers, but they do not necessarily lead to the effective transfer of skills and knowledge. Chapter 8 examines the gap between adoption and assimilation by focusing on those factors that limited learning and the assimilation of technical know-how. In late nineteenth-century Mexico, opportunities for learning and for interacting with and engaging with global technologies were unequally distributed, with predictable results. In the short run, widespread adoption of new technologies made possible a dramatic transformation of the country’s productive potential. In the long run, they did little to contribute to the development of domestic capabilities among Mexico’s engineers, mechanics, and workers.

Following the sinking of oil tanker SS Torrey Canyon (the largest oil spill disaster to that date), officials at the US State Department proposed that the Science Committee re-orient its program so as to accommodate research on pollution and environmental degradation. The newly-elected US president Richard Nixon further propelled environmentalism in the NATO arena by advocating that the alliance take responsibility for new actions, especially to improve the quality of life in Western society. As a result NATO agreed to establish a new Committee on the Challenges of Modern Society and the Science Committee was reformed to accommodate Nixon's environmental agenda. Both initiatives, however, had hidden diplomatic ambitions, especially as they represented a way to evade alternative propositions set forward by US allies at an important junction in NATO's history.

The global economy has enjoyed more than a half-century of unprecedented economic growth and a growth ideology is firmly entrenched in advanced and developing countries alike. It is the axis for policy making and is buttressed by a wealth of theorizing and empirical research on the sources of growth and how these can be mobilized by dint of policy making and institution building. But with policy-makers now demanding growth that is sustainable, green, and inclusive, growth economics must enlarge the menu of practical policy options so as to: enable countries to increase capital investment embodying advances in (green) technology; improve education delivery in order to enhance the quality of human capital, increase employability, and arrive at equitable outcomes; and implement vital institutional reforms to yoke and temper market forces. Growth economics is in great demand but arguably overdue for a “scientific revolution” to accommodate new demands.