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Steering Technoscience Wisely
- Monday, 10 May 2010
The first shortcoming of how technology is being steered deals with the fact that there will always be unintended consequences associated with new emerging technology. There are various suggestions that can be taken to reduce the damage caused by the introduction of the emerging technology. Two of the suggestions are to either slow down the development process or to simply follow the correct steps involved in the development process.
The first suggestion is to simply slow down the development and production of the newest technology. For example, there is a chemist who designed a new wonder pill that seems to cure all signs of cancer. He tests his new pill on just a handful of patients. Based on this data, he reaches the conclusion that this will rid the world of a very serious disease.
Due to various reasons, he decided to place this product on the market. However, a few months later, it comes to his attention that instead of curing cancer, the pill does kill cancer but it also slowly kills the patient. If the chemist had simply spent more time in doing more research, he would have eventually reached the conclusion that the pill was deadly instead of beneficial to life. In this specific case, the too rapid development of this innovation resulted in a negative outcome.
The second suggestion is to follow the proper procedure that is required in the development and production of the given technology. Properly following the steps in any given procedure generally results in the prevention of incidents from occurring. In the case of the Ford Pinto, the company did not follow the proper procedure that resulted in unintended consequences.
Generally, the first step in the involved in the development and production of a car is to draw a blueprint for it. Later a prototype must be produced following the blueprint. At which point, the prototype undergoes various types of tests to determine any faults that are present with the current design of the car. After the testing is done, the blueprints are corrected and a new prototype is produced. This process is repeated until the involved parties are satisfied with the design of the car.
After testing is done, the actual production line is designed and developed so that the car can be mass produced. This process must occur in order otherwise, there is a high probability that unintended consequences will occur. As previously stated, the Pinto did not follow the proper procedure, one after another, but instead did them concurrently.
The testing of the design of the car occurred at the same time that the mass production line was being setup. During the testing of the car, it was determined that there was a safety issue with the design. As a result, the correct changes could not be integrated into the car design because they car was already being mass produced. [3]
These two suggestions may allow the theory of trial and error to occur that may result in reducing the severity of unintended consequences and potential benefits. Some of the potential benefits are that the severity of unintended consequence can be lessened; increase the rate at which errors are corrected. In addition, it may also allow some degree of steering to prevent technology from reaching a point in which errors can no longer be corrected.
The second shortcoming that arises from the improper steering of technologies results in the unfair distributions of benefits of technology. There are many factors that contribute the unfair distribution of benefits. Some of the factors are caused by a mixture of economic, political and legal reasons. Thankfully there are economic and social innovations that can lead to a better distribution of technologies.
The first fact that plays a role is economics. If a company places a high price on its technology, it will play a role in who will be able to use the technology. If the citizens from a given country are only able to make around $1 a day, and the price of the given technology is more than $50, who would be able to afford to buy this technology? The simple fact is that this piece of technology will be out of the reach of most people due to the fact that these people do not have the economic means to acquire the technology. In addition, these people would rather use the little money they do get on food or shelter.
Another factor that plays a role is how patents are used to protect technologies. The role that patents play is attributed to political and legal changes. For example, in India and many other countries, seeds have become patented. This prevents the farmers from saving their seeds and providing the extra seeds to the public section. Prior to this, people had the options of saving, exchanging or selling those extra seeds to other farmers. This would allow the farmers to save and make extra money because they could do whatever they wanted with the seeds they no longer needed. [2]
Due to the fact that seeds became patented, farmers were forced to follow rules that would result in the unfair distribution of seeds. They were no longer able to keep their surplus of seeds to be used the following year, sell them to others and save some money in the process. The farmers would have to buy new seeds year after year and many of them would be unable to afford paying for the seeds year after year. Farmers literally became slaves to the companies who owned these patented seeds due to the economic conditions placed upon the famers by political and legal reasons. [2]
The third shorting of incorrect steering of technologies results in the varying pace of innovations. There are three areas that can be used to evenly pace the development of innovations. The first area that can be used to help the facilitation is to use a few political innovations within the government. The second area focuses on how to properly allocate scientist’s energies to serve the public good. The final area uses economic or social innovations to better steer technological innovations.
The first area involves telling the government to use a few political innovations that could improve technological steering. The first innovation could be the selection and training of government officials to become more competent in regards to both science and technology. Both the government and universities could work out a deal which could allow the officials to take science and technology classes. The government would pay certain percentage of the university tuition which should motivate the officials to get more education. The universities would also benefit in that they would get more students enrolled in their school.
The second being that there could be incentives placed on government officials to induce them to regulate tax or otherwise steer technological innovation. The constituents of the various government officials could be used as a way to put pressure on the government officials to regulate tax or otherwise steer technological innovations. Constituents could say something like “unless you place some taxes on certain industries, we will no longer vote for you.”
The third innovation that can be used is the notion of democratic wholesaling. Using it may allow there to be a price drop on given technologies. For example, a given technology may have an average cost of around $50. Using democratic wholesaling may be able to reduce the price to well under $50 to a more manageable cost that people can afford.
The second area focuses on using various suggestions that could facilitate a more appropriate allocation of scientist’s energies to serve the public good. One suggestion is to increase the amount of funding for areas that are of high social priorities. This paper will not try to determine how high social priorities are decided on due to the fact that it varies from person to person or organization to organization. More funding could come from both government and private institutions that could give incentives to researchers. This will also increase the rate that discoveries are made which will eventually benefit the public.
A perfect example of what the potential benefits from increased funding is by looking at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. This foundation was created by Bill Gate to find a way to fight Malaria that kills an estimated 1,000,000 each year. [1] Within the next decade, the foundation plans to commit $10 billion develop and distribute the Malaria vaccine throughout the world. [4]
A simple suggestion which could facilitate a better allocation of energies could already be in the hands of both universities and colleges alike. Both of these institutions could give incentives to their scientists for them to also work for the public good. Incentives will always play a major role in the allocation of here scientists spend their energies.
Look at the comparison between erectile dysfunction, ED, and malaria research. There is more research done on erectile dysfunction than malaria mainly because ED has more funding and is also very profitable. There are two ways that could increase the research done for malaria or other public high priorities. As previously stated, funding plays a major role in creating an incentive. If you increase the funding for issues like Malaria, more scientists would be attracted to use their energies on the subject.
The second idea is one that is extremely easy and plausible for universities and corporations to accomplish. Both can simply give credit or recognition to the researchers for their work in serving the public good. Researchers could be recognized for something along the lines of “Outstanding Citizen Service”. The third idea follows the second idea in that it still involves a form of recognition. Instead of given the researchers public recognition, they could place a value of the public service that can be used when the researcher is being evaluated. The second and third ideas are realistic in that neither would really require much to occur on the parts of the universities or the corporations.
The final area uses either economic or social innovations that could be used to improve the steering of the technological innovations. Some include the tying of CEO pay with their public performance, the changing of who is represented on corporate board of directors or switch the corporations “for-profit” status to “non-profit.”
One way that can be used to induce CEOs to worry about public performance is to tie it in with their salary. For example, if the CEO is able to release 30% less carbon emissions in the next decade or a 3% per year, maybe the CEO could get a pay increase which would be stated in their contracts.
Another financial incentive could be that the government could give tax reduction to CEOs who reduce their emission levels. The government could design a scale system that could be used to identify which emissions would provide the corporation with the tax breaks. If you reduce carbon emission you would get a bigger reduction in comparison to reducing methane. This could be also tied to the % decrease each year. For example, if you reduce carbon by 10%, the company would expect a 20% tax decrease. If they only reduce methane by 5% they would only get a 10% tax decrease. By paying fewer taxes, the CEO could expect to receive a bigger paycheck or bonus that year.
An additional suggestion that can be used is to use the power of government purchasing. Government purchasing can help in that instead of the government buying their goods from major corporations, they can make purchases from small businesses. Some of these small businesses would be ones that are managed by minority groups and women. Instead of buying 100% from major corporations, they can reduce the percentage amount. For example, they can buy 85% from the major corporations and use the remaining percentages to buy goods from small businesses. This would help these businesses in that with the extra demand from the government, it will increase the chances that these small businesses to succeed.
A social innovation which can be used to better steer technologies is to change who exactly is represented on corporate boards of directors. Generally, the people who are on the board of directors are ones who are in high positions in society. Instead of having a somewhat homogenous group, boards can consist of a variety of people who are in different fields. Some of the members who could be represented could come from academics, scientists, community leaders, environmentalists.
Scientists could provide technical knowledge about the various innovations. Environmentalists could be used to indicate potential hazards if their innovations are improperly disposed of, be it by various parties. Community leaders have their fingers on the pulse of the community. They may be able to be used to find out which types of innovations that the community wants. Changing the current structure of who is placed on corporate boards could lead to a better representation of the presently under-represented interests.
The final innovation is switching the corporations “for-profit” status to “non-profit.” The characteristics of “non-profits” are quite different from “for-profit.” The differences could be one way that would help corporations to better steer technologies. The main difference being that their purpose is not to make money but instead is to serve public interests. The main benefit being a “non-profit” includes the fact that corporations can receive tax-exemption for most of their activities that are related to serving public interests. Some of those activities include that most of the work is done by volunteers and the selling of donated goods. [5]
There are many shortcomings that have arisen as a result of improperly steering both science and technology. Some of the shortcomings include the creation of unintended consequences, the unfair distribution of benefits of technology and the varying pace of innovations. The fixings of the mentioned shortcoming may lead to the better steering of technologies.
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