roundtable: Los Angeles Times column, 10-19-95

roundtable: Los Angeles Times column, 10/19/95

Los Angeles Times column, 10/19/95

Gary Chapman (gary.chapman@mail.utexas.edu)
Fri, 20 Oct 1995 09:48:23 -0500 

Message-Id: <v01510103acad66471105@[128.83.112.58]>
Date: Fri, 20 Oct 1995 09:48:23 -0500
To: communet@moose.uvm.edu,
From: gary.chapman@mail.utexas.edu (Gary Chapman)
Subject: Los Angeles Times column, 10/19/95

Below is my column that appeared in The Los Angeles Times October 19, 1995.
This column should also appear, in the next week or so, in The Boston Globe
and The San Jose Mercury News.

-- Gary

Gary Chapman
Coordinator
The 21st Century Project
LBJ School of Public Affairs
Drawer Y
University Station
University of Texas
Austin, TX  78713
(512) 471-8326
(512) 471-1835 (fax)
gary.chapman@mail.utexas.edu

If the Republicans in the Congress are successful in passing their proposed
budget, federal science and technology policy will be changed more
profoundly than at any time since the National Science Foundation was
initiated forty years ago.

And these changes will be devastating -- not only to the global
competitiveness of American industry, but to the idea that we, as citizens,
can shape our technological future.

Already the availability of public scientific and technological information
has been drastically curtailed by the demise of the Congressional Office of
Technology Assessment, which closed its doors on September 30th. For over
twenty years, OTA has been providing members of Congress, and the public,
significant reports from task forces and panels of experts and citizens
asked to consider the trajectories of technology and innovation in the U.S.
The loss of OTA, killed by Republican hostility, will be, according to
author Howard Rheingold, "like driving into the future with the headlights
off."

Now the deathwatch is set for the Department of Commerce, which has managed
most of the substantial federal investments in non-military technology. The
Department's Advanced Technology Program, which President Clinton launched
to help U.S. industry stay competitive with government-subsidized foreign
firms, was the only federal program specifically singled out for
elimination in the "Contract for America," the Republican Party's
blueprint.

The only technology programs maintaining or getting increases in funding in
the Republican budget are those for military R&D, including dubious
projects like "Star Wars," one of the Republican Party's favorite ideas.
With the Soviet Union history, and Russia unable to even wage a conclusive
war in Chechnya, increasingly baroque military technologies are what the
U.S. needs least.

What the proposed cuts in federal technology policy signal is a return to
the so-called "black box" model of innovation. Proponents of this model,
such as Rep. Robert Walker, the new chairman of the House Science
Committee, believe that the government's role in technology policy should
be limited to investments in basic research, primarily in basic science.
Out of this investment, goes this argument, will come "generic" knowledge
that private firms can use to develop marketable technologies. The phrase
"black box" refers to where the investment dollars enter, and from where
innovation emerges -- what happens "inside the box" cannot be seen or
planned.

Practically no policy experts believe in the "black box" model of
innovation anymore, and the U.S. is the only country in the world proposing
to return to this 1950s approach. Every other industrialized nation has
some form of industrial policy for targeting industries of the future,
mobilizing and coordinating researchers and skilled labor, and refining the
innovation process "inside the box," between investment and output.

The result of a relapse to the "black box" model will be a transfer of
world leadership in technological vision to countries willing to stake a
claim on the future by "priming the pump" of innovation with public
investment. In contrast, private U.S. firms, facing intense competition,
will have to turn their attention to short-term investment returns, cutting
long-range R&D budgets and slashing talented personnel, illustrated by
AT&T's breakup of its world-famous Bell Labs.

Moreover, the dismantling of public agencies that can provide a vision of
our collective technological future will remove the means by which citizens
can have an influence on important issues like environmental quality,
equitable access to technology, the character of work, and the livability
of our cities, among other things. The Republicans' fetish for the wonders
of the market will mean that the only way we'll be able to shape technology
will be as individual, atomized consumers, instead of as citizens with a
public, democratic vision about how we want American society to look and
function in the next century.

Thus, the worst result of the Republican plan for technology policy is that
it will rob citizens of the chance to create a vision of the future that we
can pursue as a nation, instead of as a disorganized collection of
customers. Does anyone believe that the U.S. will continue to remain the
world's leader in technology by focusing exclusively on whatever
individuals may want to buy? Has consumerism become synonymous with
civilization?

Frank Press, former president of the National Academy of Sciences, warns
that, "Without a vision of the future, there is no basis for choosing
policies for science and technology that will be appropriate for the years
ahead."

The U.S. middle class is so pressed by economic turbulence and uncertainty
that many people cannot muster the optimism needed to sustain a vision of a
better future over the long run. They want relief now, and cutting taxes
and government seems to be the way to ease the pressure many families are
feeling these days.

But if we junk the agencies that can transform a vision of the future into
effective public policy, we may never recover what it will take to rekindle
our optimism and our national purpose. We and our children may then have
more high tech gadgets to play with, but we'll live in a far poorer
country.

Copyright 1995 Gary Chapman

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