Technology assessment: Some questions from a developing country perspective

TECHNOLOGICAL

FORECASTING

AND

SOCIAL

CHANGE

45, 63-77

(1994)

Technology Assessment: Some Questions from a Developing Country Perspective SUSANTHA

GOONATILAKE

ABSTRACT

The emergence of technology assessment did not occur in a societal or value vacuum; neither did its practice. Today’s TA expertise is the outcome of historically located concerns, still unique to a particular narrow space (“Euro America”) and a narrow time frame (post-1960s). There are wide cultural, economic, societal and historical variations in the developing world as compared to the developed Western nations. This variation limits the usefulness of the simple transfer of concepts developed in the West. There are also many different potential stakeholders in developing countries. These also include those outside the formal sectors who variously define desirable and undesirable aspects of the social and other factors of technology. This results in different cultural definitions of ethics, different visions of gender equality, different attitudes to the environment, different contents and values in local knowledge systems, and different social organizations associated with a given technology. An effective TA should recognize this multiplicity. It requires cognition, action, and debate on these key factors. At times this becomes an unavoidable developmental debate.

Introduction The emergence of technology assessment was not in a societal vacuum; neither is its practice. Technology assessment (TA) was developed and is done by professionals located in institutions, which are in turn located in a societal framework, and in turn located in a particular historical setting. It is the consequences of this particular locatedness that this paper will address, as the practice of formal TA spills over from its area of origin namely America and Western Europe into the developing world. Because of space limitations, I will raise only a few aspects of the problems of locatedness here. I could best start this discussion by tracing the broad social setting for the emergence of technology assessment and its allied cluster of concepts and practices. SUSANTHA GOONATILAKE has been trained both as an electrical engineer and a sociologist in respectively, Sri Lanka, West Germany, and Britain. Among his books are AbortedDiscovery: Science and Creativity in the Third World and The Evolution of Information: Lineages in Gene, Culture and A&fact. He has taught and researched in several universities in Europe, Japan and the US. He is at the present a Visiting Scholar, Center for Studies of Social Change, The New School for Social Research, New York, NY. Address reprint requests to Susantha Goonatilake, Center for Studies of Social Change, The New School for Social Research, 64 University Place, New York, NY 10003. Note: This paper was prepared for presentation at the Expert Group Meeting on Technology Assessment, Monitoring and Forecasting, held by the United Nations in Paris, January 25-28, 1993. Publication of the Proceedings is under consideration. The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the United Nations. 0

1994 United Nations

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There was no TA in the current sense in the early stages of industrialization. There was a technology, say steam or textile manufacture, for which there was a felt economic need. These were then adopted without much formal debates in a structured conceptual setting of the kind that today is known as TA. The current TA concerns have to be set within a host of intellectual, societal, and economic concerns that have grown up within the last few decades and so necessitated the current practices. Locating the Debate Let me approach this issue through some of the remarks made in a background discussion paper at a recent expert group meeting meant to be primarily a clearing house for concepts on the field sponsored by the United Nations and its allied agencies. The paper itself is a fair summary of the state of discussion in the West, especially America. Thus, the paper points out that there are varieties of meanings for TA [l] and that problems of technology are identified through activist or institutional mechanisms [l]. But, once this institutionalization has occurred, impact assessment is driven more by procedural requirements of existing laws [ 11. TA is generally viewed as impact assessment including that of its environmental impact (EIA). In this sense, from a broad perspective, the preparation for an event like UNCED is also akin to TA [I]. There is also the practice of social impact assessment (SIA) in TA [l]. There are two general approaches to technology assessment. Narrow focus TA deals with the impact of specific technological developments; broad focus TA deals with public policy issues that relate to technological change [ 11. Generally, broad TA is rarely practiced. But TA is value laden, and a broadened TA framework should recognize a multiplicity of values in possible stake holders [l]. Part of the safeguards in the presence of a multiplicity of values is to incorporate minority opinions from members of the TA team as well as from outsiders [l]. But, given these contingent social factors, TA in its application to developing countries is yet seen largely in a universalist light. Thus, TA is viewed in the document from a “relatively neutral” point of view in the social sense [ 11. And, Western TA approaches are only adapted to the development context [l]. Development TA in most current formulations also becomes more an exercise of correct technology choice capability than of impact assessment, its major concern in the developed world. It also studies socioeconomic implications of importing technologies from foreign corporations [ 11. But development TA stresses only already developed technologies [l], and so, as presently practiced, emphasizes more monitoring of existing technology and less its forecasting [l]. Organizations and relationships that are institutionalized in developed countries are not necessarily institutionalized in developing countries [ 11. And so, if decision structures, formal and informal, public and private, are the ones to make policy structures that effect technology in developed countries, the question arises as to what their counterparts in developing countries should be [ 11. In the US, the EIS requires public hearings [l], but, what is the public that should be called in a developing country for such a meeting? Is it the public that speaks a Western tongue, reads the same journals and newspapers, watches or listens to CNN or BBC, navigates the same broad language of discourse as Westerners, and articulates limited differences of opinion within this discourse on desirable technological options, or the societal options that a given technology implies? Or on the other hand, is the “public,” one that could be drawn from the nonwestern civilizational processes in the culture and

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who could raise some fundamental questions not raised within the culturally constrained parameters of the Western discourse? If potential stake holders should be included in the TA process [l] whom should these be in developing countries? There are many publics, many stake holders; not necessarily the ones seen or heard by developmentalists. But stake holders in developing countries say, may include persons who want to reject totally even the way of life offered with the technology. Or, at a less global level, they could be those who resist the exploitation of the rain forest and who once would have been denounced as backward and reactionary, and now are suddenly brought into the vanguard of environmental progress and wisdom through the action of Western-based environmentalists. They could be those who bemoaned the loss of rice and wheat diversity during the Green Revolution and were denounced as irrational, but in nineties hindsight appear to be both prescient as well as rational. The question is how and who should give voices to the civilizational voiceless, those made to be silent when viewed from only one legitimized frame of reference. If, in developing countries academics, consultants, governmental authorities and private sectors should interact in the TA process [ 11, the question is, should these groups be only those who are a cultural reflection of their counter parts in the West? Or, should they be more inclusive. And, if in cases of conflict a “court” would decide between different options [I]. The question should be, who would sit in such a court and by which laws should they judge? Clearly, to adequately answer these questions, one has to go back to the drawing board and ask fundamental questions about how society, economy, culture, and technology hang together and influence each other. And, for a beginning, it is useful to recall the broad background as well as the Zeitgeist that gave rise to present Western concerns on technology and its impact on society and environment. The emergence of TA in the West, was an organic development linked to particular societal, organizational, and technological developments. There were no significant TA concerns before the 1960s. Although macro theorists had linked technological processes to society, as responsible to its ills as well as its good aspects, all key decision makers in the developed world saw technology as benign. In this vein, one British Prime Minister, Harold Wilson encouraged the “White Heat” of technology to usher in a benign future. But, concerns of technology arising from the nuclear threat that had risen in the 195Os, were soon joined, beginning with the book by Rachel Carson, Silent Spring, by increased awareness of negative environmental effects. In the organizational sphere, there were studies that detailed the social dimension of technology, its alienating effects as well as the possibilities of removing some of these through tinkering with sociotechnical systems. The feminist critiques of technology broadened these discussions, as did those on major environmental issues such as Global Warming, toxic wastes, and release of bioengineered organisms. Ethical dimensions of technology use now entered the discourse on a wide variety of fronts, including among others, medicine and biotechnology. It is within this broad background that the subject of technology assessment developed in the West and its concerns began to be considered not only legitimate but also desirable. And, those concerns that are today stamped as TA expertise are the outcome of these historically located concerns. It is but the visible tip of an iceberg of larger societal and cultural dynamics that have been unique to a particular narrow space (“Euro America”) and a narrow time (post-1960s) frames. Yet, latecomers to development have generally seen technology as essentially benign. There were critics such as Gandhi who wedded his vision of the ideal society to some of the critical attitudes that emerged in early Nineteenth Century Europe, and was associated

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with such voices as William Blake and William Morris. But, his and similar voices were drowned in the technological optimism of leaders like Nehru and Chou En Lai. And, more significantly such concerns were viewed as essentially reactionary by developmentalists. And, a large number of countries embarked on a technology acquisition journey exemplified by the Japanese Meiji slogan of an earlier period Bummei Kaika (“Civilization and Enlightenment”). The acquisition of technology by developing countries depends on the type of technology made available to them. So, to have a proper understanding of TA in a developing country context, one should have an overview of the different generic technologies available in the world, as well as of the different ways in which technology interacts in a developing country milieu. Society and Technology in Comparative Perspective There are a set of generic technologies associated with different human societal arrangements as they emerged historically. They vary from stone tools in hunter-gathering to beginnings of metal tools in agricultural societies to a series of technologies that emerged at various stages of industrial societies. These technologies go in turn through the industrial economy in “creative waves of destruction” in the words of Schumpeter [2] destroying the old and establishing the new. Thereby new technical means of manufacture, with a new range of products is established. The generic technologies as they emerged since the Industrial Revolution, were in the order of emergence, steam, electricity, chemicals, and oil-based chemicals and synthetic materials, and for the contemporary and emerging period, information technology and biotechnology. Steam powered the early systems of mass manufacture peaking in the number of applications in the latter half of the nineteenth century. The next was electricity associated technology [3]. Electricity not only simply shifted the motive power in manufacture from steam to electricity, but also made a qualitative shift. The technology wave engendered by electricity rose rapidly in the latter half of the nineteenth century and reached a plateau of applications in the West around the 195Os, the time when developing countries were beginning to launch concerted industrial programs. It was around the beginning of this century that the technologies associated with the internal combustion engine, oil-based chemicals and synthetic materials emerged, and their applications then rose rapidly [3]. The applications began to level out around the 1970s in the developed world at a time when some of the developing countries that had started industrialization programs since the 1950s were beginning a shift from import substitution and quasi-autarchic policies to a more international perspective. The technologies that are expected to have a much more pervasive impact than the earlier ones are two new technologies that are rapidly maturing at the moment, namely information technology and biotechnology. These new “third wave” technologies are more “generic” than all the earlier technologies since the Industrial Revolution [3]. During the immediate and medium future, the processes and products of these technologies would penetrate the economy intensively. The number of applications of the new information technology is rising exponentially, that the cost of some vital uses of the technology would be cheaper than a traditional agricultural tool in a developing country, or for that matter, in the not too distant future, the cost of a developing country meal. Commentators have pointed out that for the developing countries, information technology had the scope of leap-frogging development [4], and is today poised to penetrate many segments of the developing economy.

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Biotechnology could possibly have an equally pervasive impact in agriculture, and medicine [.5]. The range of applications of this technology is rising rapidly as new uses are being discovered in a wide variety of fields from health to agriculture and manufacturing. It would have major repercussions on existing agriculture and husbandry, medicine and industrial processes. A 1991 UNCTAD-UNDP study indicated that most of the export products of the developing world would be strongly affected within the next decade and a half [5]. Biotechnology would change existing trade patterns by increasing the production of existing commodities or by replacing them through the introduction of substitutes. Existing trade patterns between North and South were based initially to fit the raw material needs of the industries of the nineteenth century. With the changes in technology, these patterns are undergoing major changes. The different developing countries are presented with the different generic technologies at different times, at different stages of the development of their economies, as well as at different stages of the global socioeconomic system. This implies that, for the late developer, there is a greater spread of generic technologies to choose from. These technologies are in addition, presented in a more telescoped form, all bunched more or less together. Technology Impacts If the above are the different generic technologies, what are their impacts on a variety of factors that could be included in both a broad- as well as a narrow-based TA? The impacts are on the market, environment, society, gender, cultural, and ethical concerns. The technologies being transferred are not just inanimate objects. Students of the relationship between technology and the socioeconomic system have shown how technology, especially complex technology, changes in response to implicit or overt socioeconomic changes. Thus, the external socioeconomic environment and its associated ideology was mapped inside the factory technology of the early nineteenth century and subsequent periods [6]. Technology transfer is a product of social and technical factors. And ingrained, for example, in the technology of say, the motor-car industry is a whole array of assumptions about the nature of human relations arising from the particular historical experience of capitalist development in the West. Any technology has social consequences. When such a technology is imported into a different society or country, it results in the reproduction at a micro level of social relations derived from the society that engendered the technology [7]. Examples of this process include the adoption by the Soviet Union of the motor car assembly line and the acceptance of the Green Revolution technology in Asian countries. These technologies being a product of social changes within certain Western countries, acted as a carrier of particular social relations. The adopted technology that was purportedly introduced as neutral tended to recreate a nonneutral social situation. Technology in this role was history and social experience in concentrated form, which when adopted, reproduced some of the social relations of the society that gave birth to it [6]. Gender and Technology There is a gender dimension to the social aspects of technology. The unconscious gender bias of some major developmental efforts like the Green Revolution whose results were to marginalize women and put them relatively in a worse position than before, has been well documented. This was caused by the manner in which the technology package was introduced, women being denied access to it, but also to some of the inherent features of the technology. The technology resulted in a particular type of seed being selected

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that had a high yield, but also was responsive to high amounts of water, fertilizer, and pesticides. This package was not socially neutral. Women’s traditional roles of winnowing and weeding, for example were usurped by particular forms of machinery for which women had no access. Similarly, the negative gender impacts associated with many of the recent industrializing efforts such as in the NICs have also been well recognized [7]. One area in which social factors including gender could impinge strongly would be in biotechnology, especially in agriculture. Seeds are potentially very malleable, and one could as well have bred seeds in the Green Revolution that were drought and pest resistant as well as requiring less fertilizer or even partly self-fertilizing, potentially favoring smaller farmers. During the Green Revolution, the scientific means were lacking to make adequate use of this potential malleability. Today biotechnology provides a very socially malleable technology, which could fit into a variety of social and environmental factors. But, once a technology is introduced and spread widely, it gets locked into a set of institutional arrangements making it difficult to dislodge. Information technology is also socially malleable. Gender biases exist [8, 91 and the subject’s disciplinary assumptions, it has been argued, suggest a masculinization, ignoring alternative constructions of feminine reality [lo]. This gender bias against women exists also in current computer soft ware [ 111, where cultural factors including gender relations influence the technology [12]. The negative effects on women of the introduction of information technology has also been noted [ 121. In several areas in which women have traditionally worked, they are being easily displaced by some of the emerging information technologies [ 131. But, views surrounding gender itself, even of feminists, are socially constructed in different cultures, so that in the new malleable technologies of information and technology, gender interactions vary from societal milieu to milieu. Environmental Impact One could also relate some of the generic technologies to their pollution characteristics and environmental impacts. The stress on the environment through production processes in agriculture and industry are very much contingent on the type of technologies used and their raw material and energy needs, as well as on such associated factors as the nature of their waste products, the amount of heat dissipated and in broader terms, the entropy generated through the production process. The typical generic technologies associated with the nineteenth century and early twentieth century-steam, chemicals, oil, and electricity and used in industries as varied as steel and automobiles had strong inherent environmental impacts. Many of them have been cleaned up, with not inconsiderable cost by processes that, for example, absorb harmful effluents. But, there are newer generic technologies that may be inherently more environmentally benign than existing ones. Several observers have pointed out that the shift to newer technologies, is accompanied by a diminution in both material and energy use, and hence of environmental stress [ 14, 151. Information machines require far less energy and material than steel factories, steam engines, automobiles, or other nineteenth- and twentieth-century technologies. Further, information technology when incorporated within these other older technologies can make them run more efficiently with less material and energy use.

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The shift to biotechnology also means an array of new products and processes, not only in agriculture, but also in industry. The nature of agriculture could change significantly with biological means of fertilization, of controlling pests and improving nutrition of plants replacing current chemical means. Biological processes that use, say, enzymes in industry including in mining, would result in far less material and energy use than do present alternatives [16]. Yet, the introduction of biotechnology to agriculture could also add an increased stress on the biosphere by eroding biodiversity through the introduction of mono cultures of the most “most productive” plants. A key factor for a drop in material and energy use will be the shift in the composition of products and technological processes in the economy. When this composition shifts toward a chip-based and biotechnology-based product and processes, the shift will be toward less material and energy use. Many existing discussions on global stress have been made on the basis of a relatively static picture of the predominance of nineteenth century and early twentieth century technologies. A marked shift in the direction of the new technologies-aspects of which are becoming very affordable for developing countries -could very well help tilt the material and energy stress toward a less disastrous path. Developing countries have potentially a shopping shelf of technologies to acquire, depending on which societal and technological directions they decide. The particular ones they consciously acquire, or the ones that they unconsciously come to, would shape the impacts that technology would make on their environment. Organization Structures The industrial organizations in the West grew up with particular structures and characteristics as a part of an organic historical process. Transferring these Western organizational features wholesale does not necessarily succeed, and when such transfers are made, the expected technological output may not replicate the success in a Western environment as several studies going back to the early Post World War II period have shown [17]. Undoubtedly these factors would have been important in the technological successes and failures of the different recently industrializing countries as illustrated for example by studies on the effectiveness of Japanese organizations [ 181. Further, there is an intimate link with technology and organization as numerous studies on sociotechnical systems have demonstrated. And if a technology that has associated with it a particular form of organization is transferred into a cultural milieu with different organizational forms and motivation factors, then its productivity would not be optimal. The classical organizations of the industrial era were epitomized by large factories with huge work forces. The economics of scale and a strong division of labor with a fractionated job structure was the norm. The Fordist motor car assembly line epitomized this form of industrial organization (as for example, caricatured by Charlie Chaplin in his film “Modern Times”). Its intellectual roots lay in the theories of Adam Smith, Charles Babbage and the so-called “Scientific Management” system associated with Frederick Taylor and his colleagues. However, severe criticism based on economic and humanitarian criteria as well as the development of new technologies have changed the organizational face of desirable industrial technologies. Much has been written on the end of “Fordism” and the emergence of “post-modernist” factory organizations. Newer technologies as varied as steel production to production of machined parts have made the economics of small scale manufactures in some technologies desirable. In fact, the Japanese see the

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future in such smaller scale manufacturing units, which often have the highest chip technology incorporated in them. Several companies around the world seem to agree, as suggested by the rapid growth of flexible manufacturing systems. Adoption of these newer organizational forms by developing countries could have an added aspect on the micro-social impact of technology. Classically, the process of industrialization has seen the domestication of craftsmen and peasants into “mere appendages of the machine” doing repetitive disciplined robotised work which required them in the words of Taylor “to be as phlegmatic as an ox. “The successful adoption of industrial technology, therefore, had once implied a deskilling of craftsmen and a tight robot-like control over the unskilled, as well as a tight separation in the factory of those who planned and thought from those who followed out orders. Sometimes this required discipline, took decades to acquire and was never complete as evidenced by detailed studies in the industrialized world [19, 19A]. Yet, the newer flexible manufacturing systems seem to overcome the need to go through this deskilling and disciplining stage, and in fact, is heralded as the return of the more humane craftsman like characteristics to the factory. Just like different generic technologies are now presented on a shelf to late-comer developing nations, so are also presented associated organization forms that could be shopped for. These purchases have an intimate bearing on the social aspects and impacts of technology. Technology and Ethics Some of the issues raised above are also related to values and ethical choices. Especially with the new technologies, there are ethical dilemmas of a unique nature that have yet to be adequately considered in the developing world to prevent undesirable aspects of the technology creeping in unexamined. Major issues on TA could come from attempts to answer local questions of some of the troubling cultural and value questions raised by different technologies, especially by the newer technologies. Although their presence in developing countries is still incipient, the new technologies are expected to penetrate intensely in the coming decade. The ethical issues raised are much more intense and fundamental than such issues in traditional industrial technologies. Thus, there is a strict control, because of this examination and debate, over experimentation and release of new organisms in most developed countries. This strict enforcement in developed countries encouraged developed country companies to seek “safe havens” in those developing countries that lack awareness of the problems and none or minimal control protocols. Testing of medicines in the developing world seems to be also occurring in the genetic field as, for example, in the overseas testing of genetically altered vaccines [20]. The new technologies also put doubt on some of the most cherished self-perceptions of humans, which perceptions vary from country to country, and culture to culture. Biotechnology raises key questions on traditional concepts of what it is to be a living being, including what it is to be uniquely human, biologically [21]. On the other hand, information technology, especially artificial intelligence (AI) in mimicking human mental processes, raises questions on what it is to be uniquely human in a cultural sense. Because of these key questions, debates on ethical and cultural issues are shaping both technologies. Thus, releasing of biotechnological products to the atmosphere has been debated within a framework of its potential impact on other organisms [22]. And, advances in medicine relating to say the onset of life and its termination have been hotly discussed and have influenced conventional medical technology. Developments in the

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new biotechnology stretch these questions very much further, raising fresh and very complicated ethical issues [23]. These discussions and controversies in the cultural and social sphere influence and continuously shape the new technology [24]. These technological advances have resulted in calls in developed countries for a wide-ranging debate about these issues [25]. These debates, however, have unfolded within a context that assumes as universal, western cultural, and social givens, the imprint of the West’s religious traditions for example, being unconsciously brought in [26]. The social and medical implications of biotechnology have as yet been largely discussed only in Western countries [27]. In developing countries in contrast, there has been little debate, and therefore, little awareness on these matters [20]. Yet, workers in the field have pointed out that nonwestern traditions could well give different answers to these questions 128, 291 as, for example, reflected in the different Japanese responses to definitions of clinical death [21, 301. The use of amniocentesis and chorionic villus sampling predicts future diseases, health, parentage, and gender of the fetus. This knowledge can be used to terminate a pregnancy. Already in countries such as India, significant segments of the population are using these techniques widely to terminate female pregnancies 1311. Such uses take the function of evaluating which humans are more valuable, or which individuals would be potential burdens to their communities [32]. When further diagnostic procedures-such as at the level of the gene-become widespread- some within the next few years-a list of human traits that could be remedied becomes a reality [33], with attempts in the future to “perfect” offspring [34]. A social list of desired characteristics to be fostered and undesired characteristics to be excised out of the fetus now becomes feasible under the new technology [34]. Fashions and standards of “normalcy”in physical appearance are then realized through the technology. A particular society’s definitions of the correct, and beautiful, and the desirable is now realized through the new reproductive technology. This would make possible the reshaping of physical characteristics like eyelids to fit other cultural norms that are done today very widely in certain countries, at the genetic level. Advances in biotechnology including gene therapy could thus reshape and reformulate among others, life, death, health, and beauty [35, 361. The ethical as well as aesthetic criteria on which these are decided on are deeply culture bound and if debated within the developing countries, different cultural traditions would give different more appropriate answers to local milieus from those of the West. Advanced information technology, especially AI related ones, aims at cloning the partial behavior of the mind. This again would raise deep questions for those parts of the developing world that have strong cultural and religious traditions emphasizing the importance of the mind and mind culture, apart from more down-to-earth issues such as privacy of information. Recognition of the intimate relationship between biotechnology and information technology on the one hand, and the social system on the other, can allow for conscious social interventions in the technology, instead of the implicit intervention that usually happens when technology is transferred. As the two technologies are very flexible to social and cultural pressures, the question then would be which culture’s and which society’s values will be mapped within these technologies as they unfold further in the future. A corollary task would then be to influence these most plastic of technologies so that they reflect the best social aspirations and knowledge systems of the different cultures of developing countries. Developing country inputs into debates on the ethics and nature

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of both biotechnology and information TA vis-a-vis these technologies.

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would give different dimensions

into

Local Technology Traditions and Local Knowledge The technology that is introduced into developing countries is on top of an already existing technology infrastructure. This latter would include in most developing countries after more than a century of exposure to the West, past Western-derived technology. Yet, there are also often present vital segments of prewestern technology. These could exist in systems of irrigation, in systems of petty manufacture and as a knowledge base in parts of agricultural and medical practices. The transferred external technology could be blended with existing ones, the new technologies for example with the old industrial technologies or with preindustrial skills [37]. There are also aspects of existing traditional knowledge in the developing world that are becoming vital to the latest of technologies. Let me point out the possibilities by taking examples of presumably the simplest of knowledge elements that are held by say, hunter gatherers and move onto more formal, “civilized” stores of knowledge. There is a great amount of direct practical knowledge of, for example, plants and animal products and large number of “little traditions” known by small groups of individuals across the world. Plants that are unknown in developed countries have many uses that have been identified over the centuries by farmers, pastoralists, and traditional healers across the globe in their ethnobiology. Thus, it has been said of even the simplest of such groups, “if all their knowledge about their land and its resources were recorded and published, it would make up a library of thousands of volumes” [38]. Scattered around the world are sets of veritable walking encyclopedias in these small traditions. Already some of this knowledge is being used in biotechnology, a frontline field in which access to a variety of useful genes is vital. This ethno-biology knowledge is gathered by, among others, multinational corporations, the plants and their properties are identified, and later the particular gene responsible for a desired property is isolated to be incorporated into a new genetically engineered plant [39]. The knowledge that is in the bioengineered plant, therefore, comes from two sources, the original knowledge of the farmer who had, over the centuries, identified the plant’s useful properties, and the multinational corporation that isolated and incorporated the gene. Recently, the relationship of the two with the knowledge has been unequal and predatory and subject to major debates. Yet, it is an example in which the global knowledge system can be added to by the simplest of social groups. Of the more formal knowledge systems, many examples already exist in the medical field of items taken from the pharmacopoeia of nonEuropean civilizations and used successfully. Attempts in medicine also include the fields of biofeed back, and of the relationship between body and mind, which were given a boost by proven Asian techniques. Stress-reduction techniques thus have borrowed heavily from Eastern sources and include those using direct classical Asian meditation methods. Currently, a major formal attempt in using Asian concepts is being pursued by a group of young Indian scientists and is being sponsored by India’s major scientific bodies. Here, scientists formally trained in the Western tradition are attempting to mine traditional knowledge for the Western scientific enterprise. This program is making a wideranging exploration in the fields of mathematics, logic, linguistics, and the cognitive sciences [40,41]. It is clear that one could opportunistically capture knowledge from the far-flung regions of the world and incorporate this into a global technology project.

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The issue of the relationship of local knowledge and its human keepers with the post-eighteenth century west covers a wide range of technology and social practices found in developing countries that have benefitted the West. Informal and Formal Sectors In contrast to the sector of formal technology one finds the informal sector. This informal sector is responsive to immediate market demands and market apertures; it opportunistically uses knowledge and technology wherever it finds it. In the bazaars and small markets of the developing world, the informal sector is abuzz with constant innovation. Often products from the formal sector are reprocessed and recycled into new artifacts. For example, an old thrown-away electric bulb and a discarded tin may be made into an oil lamp, a technological product found in many parts of South Asia. By similar innovative processes, new methods are discovered for making 30-year-old vehicles function; new toys are made from junk. Real technological creativity occurs in this milieu and the formal scientific and technological (S&T) structure is largely tangential to this creativity. The same informal creativity also exists at the higher ends of the technology spectrum when repairmen and hobbyists in developing countries do ceaseless experimentation and innovation to repair and modify difficult-to-obtain electronic products and parts and to make novel customized products. As the informal sector and its technology constitutes a significant part of a developing country’s economic life, its creative technology interface becomes vital. It is this dynamic creative relationship that should ideally also exist between the formal S&T system and the economy. And, in the country that most successfully transferred technology, Japan, the boundary between the formal and the informal in organizations does not exist [42]. In this milieu, different technological cultures could seamlessly blend into each other synergistically [43]. And here, a positive milieu for organizational technological creativity may have been created, a contrast to the more rigid arrangements seen elsewhere. Formal and informal technological arrangements thus fit into the tapestry of variables in the technology-local milieu interface. Dynamics at the Ground Level It should be clear by now that the intersections within the various factors unique to developing countries that impinge with technology-and which could have deleterious effects-are many. The variables that ensue are much wider than those in developing countries. The new technologies of information technology and biotechnology, because of their deeper malleability to social factors brings many different variables into the social and ethical domains. These include varying definitions of what is the correct policy on which to judge the impact of technologies on a social, familial, or gender basis. Because of the wide cultural, economic, societal, and historical variations in the developing world as compared to the Western nations, both broad and narrow TA in the developing world has, by necessity, to be part of a broader societal dialogue. It cannot be just a transfer of concepts developed elsewhere that benefit the West. Because TA is value laden, a safeguard that has been suggested in the West is to incorporate minority opinions from members of the TA team as well as from outsiders [ 11. But there are many different actors in developing countries who are potential stakeholders. These include those outside the formal sector who variously define the desirable and

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undesirable aspects of the social and other factors of technology. The differences that result include different cultural definitions of ethics (such as those that become germane to biotechnology and information technology); different visions of gender equality (as for example the different varieties of equality Western feminists have); those with different attitudes to the environment (which is different from the current formulation, where all environment-friendly groups are dumped together in one collective category of “the good that guys,” without making overt the different, nuanced attitudes to the environment even environmentally friendly nonwestern groups have); the carriers of local knowledge systems with their different contents and values and, the desired social organizations within which technology operates. Sometimes, potential stakeholders may be, at least initially, made silent by interested parties-as in the case of say an incident like the well-known Minamata poisoning case in Japan. Or they may be silent because they are not aware of technological developments, or because their views do not reach the technological and economic decision makers. In fact, these islands of perception in developing countries exist not only in social worlds, but also in the scientific-technology knowledge fields. In many developing countries, the different scientific and technology fields have been mapped out only partially. Many disciplines do not have adequate critical masses. Further, the partial disciplinary groups that exist do not interact with other fields, thus not giving rise to an organically connected whole [44]. Generally, it is safe to say that the potential concerns of TA in developing countries is one of a fractured perception. Perceptions occur in different unconnected social islands, in various social groups that often do not reach those who make decisions on technology. In developed countries, however, these islands interact by bargaining over social definitions of technology, and ultimately giving rise to a particular acceptable technology or to a particular form of TA. There are, thus, many historically derived social and cultural silent majorities in the developing world who should be given a voice. A broadened TA framework should recognize the multiplicity of values held by these societal stakeholders [ 11. The key problem would be how to do this. But, the general debate on technology in developing countries and decision making has been restricted to a narrow social stratum. Often technology is considered as desirable and is considered as a packaged whole. Those that introduce technology and filter it in an economic sense into the country generally do not consider the possibilities of unscrambling technology. Those who do, and are exposed to aspects of TA are generally involved in a discourse derived from the particular congealing of debates in the West, which gave rise to the particular body of knowledge that now goes under TA. If that is the case now, what mechanisms exist to give voice to the civilizationally voiceless? There is no easy mechanism at hand to produce a set of relevant developing country TAs. The first step before an exercise in nonwestern TA would be to make overt the attitudes and thoughts of the silent. Some members of these silent constituencies may not even be aware of the existence of the particular tecchnologies that are to be introduced, let alone the potential implications from their points of view. Thus, many in the nonwestern-influenced groups in developing countries would not be aware of the potential of biotechnology and advances in medicine and their potential impacts on a variety of values. The issues raised in these fields have been very contentious when they have been debated in the limited cultural framework of the West, and would undoubtedly raise much wider issues when shifted to a larger cultural canvas. This, in some instances may be considered a scary exercise where say, sleeping dogs of technology

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concerns are woken to add to the cacophony of already antitechnology voices that have been legitimized in the West. Though TA has spread through many nations as well as institutions in developed countries, it has yet to cross the many cultural, social, and cognitive barriers of developing countries. It must do this to fully incorporate democratically the many disenfranchised voices in the developing world. Conventional TA examines only the impacts of technology. But, in developing countries, a parallel and more active concern is how to generate technology in a society and how to bring its introduction into most debates on development. Thus, an aspect of this is seen in a rapidly developed country context, like Japan where technology forecasting is used for strategic planning. A similar exercise in developing countries would include identification of technology sources as well as identifying market niches for their industrial products. The parameters within which the debate on technology acquisition is set influences deeply the discussions on the potential impacts of technology. Aspects of TA and technology forecasting would, therefore, be deeply tied to the fabric of economic discussions in developing countries. When considering key aspects dealing with technology and the environment, the existing economic sectors including the informal ones, organization forms, local knowledge, and gender relations need to be discussed; the boundary into multifaceted macro discussions on industrialization policy often have to be crossed. The discussions have to touch on an industrializing strategy, using specific technologies and in specific industries. The broader society-technology interface therefore cannot be lost sight of when discussing TA in developing countries. Concentrating on only one aspect within a derived discourse, leads to the understandable labeling of present TA as technology arrestment [l]. In developed countries, TA should ideally be seen as an ongoing process that should be institutionalized [l]. But, the processes effecting technology in developing countries are much larger and deeper. It includes macrohistorical and cultural factors that are taken for granted in the developed world [45]. Institutionalization is a congealing to formal form of activism, making it legitimate. But in developing countries institutions for TA are often “imposed” tangential to the larger publics. And so would not adequately reflect the dynamic underlying reality outside a narrow spectrum. Sometimes, this tangential imposition could happen in the most benign way by say requirements for an environmental impact check for foreign-aided projects or funding of local environmental groups. A distortion of the cognitive structure of say environmental impact occurs when a country devoid of informed protest, finds its NGOs recognised internationally suddenly gets more money than local scientific bodies. Sometimes in developing countries, let alone the local silent stakeholders, even formal scientiic bodies, such as Associations for the Advancement of Science, do not have adequate resources to get information about a problem and discuss it. A truly pernicious development in recent years has been the relatively heavy foreign funding of local environmental groups vis-a-vis local funding of scientific groups like national Associations for Science. There are instances of the total operational annual budget for such an association with say, 3,000 members drawn from all the major scientific disciplines being only about $5,000, whereas a self-appointed environmental NGO of 3 to 4 persons would get $10,000 to $20,000 from foreign sources. Such a situation leads to the absence of informed discussions because of the distortions of social perception that this brings. The local foreign-aided environmental lobby often reduces itself to a shadow that mimics particular environmental concerns that emerged in the West only after considerable open debate and discussion. The local debates based on a studied awareness of local conditions are thereby stunted.

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A successful self-reliant TA requires an awareness of and action on some key factors. These are the environment, social societal structures, gender, organizations, the informal and formal economy, and local and imported knowledge systems. The issues that I have raised cannot be resolved except through an inclusive societal dialogue in which all the actors take part; in which all potential stakeholders are made overt and discuss the options openly. This will at times become a developmental debate in the widest possible sense. But, if one fails to get such a debate going in all its full dimensions, one must still make an effort. Failing even that, one could at least be aware of the limitations of current approaches. That would be a beginning to build a really adequate body of knowledge of relevant TA. A battery of techniques derived from these organic interactions would then emerge to give a more universal body of TA knowledge. References 1. Porter, A. L., and Weisbacker, L. W., Issues in the Use of Technology Assessment for Development, Basic Discussion Paper, United Nations New York for “United Nations Expert Group on Technology Assessment, Monitoring and Forecasting,” 1993, UNESCO Headquarters, Paris, January 25-28, 1993. 2. Schumpeter, J., Business Cycles, McGraw Hill, New York, 1939. 3. OECD, Biotechnology: Economic and Wider Impacts, OECD, Paris, 1989. 4. Bagchi, A. K., The Dtzerential Impact of New Technologies: (I Framework for Analysis, IL0 Working Papers, 162, 52, (1987). 5. UNCTAD, Trade and Development Aspects and Implications of New and Emerging Technologies: the Case of Biotechnology, Geneva, 1991. 6. Goonatilake, S., Technology as a Social Gene, JournalofScientifc and IndustrialResearch, (1979), 38, July. 7. Heyzer, N., Daughters in Industry- Work Skills and Consciousness of Women Workers in Asia, APDAC, Kuala Lampur, 1988. 8. Kaplinsky, R., Microelectronics and Employment Revisited: A Review, ILO, Geneva, 1987. 9. Keller, E. F., Gender and Science, Yale University Press, New Haven, 1985. 10. Jansen, S. C., The Ghost in the Machine: Artificial Intelligence and Gendered Thought Patterns, Resources for Feminist Research/Documentation sur La Rocherche Feministe, 17(4) 4-7, (1988). 11. Kramer, P. S., and Lehman, S., Mismeasuring Women: A Critique of Research on Computer Ability and Avoidance Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 16(l) (1990). 12. Roessner et al, The Impact of Ofice Automation on Clerical Employment, 1985-2000: Forecasting Techniques and Plausible Futures in Banking and Insurance, Quorum Books, London, 1985. 13. Raja, A., Information Technology in the Finance Sector: An International Perspective, World Employment Programme, International Labour Organization, 1990. 14. Larson, E. D., Molt, R., and Williams, R. H., Beyond the Era of Materials, Scientific Americun, 24-31, June (1986). 15. Junne, G., Komen, J., and Tomei, F., Dematerialisation of Production: Impact on Raw material Exports of Developing Countries, Third World Quarterly, 1l(2), 128-142, (1987). 16. Sercovich, F., and Morin, L., Developing Countriesand theNewBiotechnology: MarketEntryandIndustrial Policy Ottawa, 1991. 17. Rice, A. K., Ahamadebad Experiment, Tavistock, London, 1953. 18. Sigurdson, J., Measuring the Dynamics of Technological Change, Pinter Publishers, London, 1990. 19. Blauner, R., Alienation and Freedom, Chicago University Press, 1964. 19A. Bendix, R., Work and Authority in Industry, Harper Torch Books, New York, 1963. 20. Cordes, C., Overseas Trials of Genetically Altered Vaccines Raise Questions About Ethics for Researchers, Chronicle of Higher Education 33(13), (1986). 21. Donnelley, S., Medicine, Morality, and Culture: International Bioethics, Hastings Center Report, (Special) Supplement, July/August, (1989). 22. Hoffman, C. A., Ecological Risks of Genetic Engineering of Crop Plants, Bioscience, 40(6), (1990). 23. Bankowski, Z., Ethics and Health, World Health, April (1989). 24. Nelkin, D., Nelkin, L., and Tan, C., Dangerous Diagnostics: The Social Power of Biological Information, Basic Books, New York, 1990. 25. Wheeler, D. L., Ethicist Urges Public Debate on Medical Therapies that could cause Genetic Changes in Off Spring, Chronicle of Higher Education, 37(24), (1991).

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26. Wind, J. P., What can Religion Offer Bioethics, Hastings Center Report, (Special Supplement), July/August, (1990). 21. Callahan, D., Religion and the Secularization of Bioethics, Hastings Center Report, (Special Supplement), July/August, (1990). 28. Callahan, D., and Campbell, C. S., Theology, Religious Traditions, and Bioethics, Hastings Center Report, (Special Supplement), July/August, (1990). 29. Campbell, C. S., Religion and Moral Meaning in Bioethics, Hastings Center Report, (Special Supplement), July/August, (1990). 30. Kin-ichiro, K., A New Field Emerges, Hastings Center Report, 19(155), (1989). 31. Patel, V., Misuse of Prenatal Diagnostic Techniques in India-A Case-Study of Sex Determination Tests Leading IOFemale Foeticide, SNDT Women’s University, Bombay. 32. Finkelstein, J. L., Biomedicine and Technocratic Power, Hastings Center Report, July/August, 13, (1990). 33. Hunt, M., The Total Gene Screen, New York Times Magazine, Jan 19, 1986, pp. 32-33. 34. Berer, M., The Perfection of Offspring, New Scientist, 124(1725), 58-59, (1990). 35. Beree, M., The Perfection of Offspring, New Scientist, 124(1725), 58-59, (1990). 36. Elshtain, J. B., Reproduction Ethics, Utne Recorder, 44, 1991. 37. Bhalla, T. (ed.)., Blending of New and Traditional Technologies Tycooly, Dublin, 1984. 38. Pfeiffer, J. E., The Emergence of Man, Harper & Row, New York, 1969, 135. 39. Juma, C., The Gene Hunters, Zed Press, London, 1990. 40. Singh, N., Temporality and Logical Structure: an Indian Perspective, NISTADS, New Delhi, 1990. 41. Research Proposal Foundations and Methodology of Theoretical Sciences, NISTADS, New Delhi, 1991. 42. Takezawa, S., The Blue Collar Workers in Japanese Industry, International Journal of Comparative Sociology, 10, 178-195, (1969). 43. vide Kodama, F., Japanese innovation in mechatronics technology, inMeasuring theDynamics of Technological Change, J. Sigurdson ed., Pinter Publishers, London, 1990. 44. Goonatilake, S., Aborted Discovery: Science and Creativity in the Third World, London, Zed, 1984, pp. 97-116. 45. Goonatilake, S., and Chamrick, S., Technological Independence: The Asian Experience United Nations University, Tokyo, 1993. Received January 28, 1993