Science and Technology

One of my classes is on Science and Technology Policy. We're only a few classes in, but there were a few interesting points we talked about today that I thought I'd mention. The lecture in general was about each the "national innovation system". This is basically each country's method of researching and getting new knowledge and the system they have in place to use that knowledge to help the society grow. It includes things like the education system, government funding, industry, research and development, and established institutions (institutions being the established relations between the previous things). The two topics I want to mention are the lack of change in institutions and our generation's perception of technology change.

Institutions:
In class, we talked about how agriculture has had a huge effect on many parts of society, and that even when the logical link is gone, the institution doesn't change. For example, students were given the summer off because this was a time that they could help with farming and taking care of crops. Now that most students do not have this task to manage, it has been proposed that year-round school should be implemented. However, even though the reason of farming is no longer there, many people don't want to change to year-round school.

I should mention, I'm a big fan of summer vacation, so I'm not necessarily advocating year-round school, I just think it's interesting how hard it is to change traditions, even when it might make sense.

Technology Change:
Our professor asked us the question: Think about the number of transportation methods available right now (cars, planes, boats, trains, etc.). Raise your hand if you believe that no more methods of transportation will be developed.

Nobody raised their hand. Even when the stipulation was added that the change would occur within our lifetime, nobody raised their hand.

Our generation has a strong belief that technology will continue to evolve - we assume that we are in a constant, and fast, process of change. In fact, our professor guessed that people would probably drop the class if he disagreed and took a pessimistic view of technology change, and believed that technology change will slow down, and things won't change much. The average person in our generation (and the average consumer) expect technology development to continue inevitably.

Ok, I reallize these aren't fully developed thoughts - but I have a textbook to read, so I think that's all I've got for today. Feel free to comment.