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The circulation of technology

All Acting Regiment

20:16 / 22.06.04

I'm interested in the idea of how a certain technological advance spreads geographically and culturally over time. For example, the Tank: invented in the first world war in europe, now almost every country has one.
Can we predict how quickly a new technology, for example, 4d body armour, once made by the dominant power, will enter circulation and thus be available to everyone thereby eliminating the advantage it gives?

The Prince of All Lies

21:40 / 22.06.04

I think it depends on whether the technology is developed by the government or a private contractor.. I wouldn't expect that kind of body armor to be available in other countries for a long, long time.. Stealth fighters have been around for a while yet I haven't seen the US selling them to other countries...why would they?? War-applicated technology is not like other technologies, because the benefits of keeping them to themselves are enormous..
Just think of it this way: Does the US sell nuclear bombs or Apaches? Certainly not...but that doesn't mean they can't be copied by other countries.

00:19 / 23.06.04

One interesting way in which tech moves from place to place is through recycling programs.
A specific example:
I volunteered at a site that refurbished "obsolete*" computers and put them back into the community by donating them to schools, disadvantaged individuals, and developing companies. By far, the biggest push was to get them out to developing countries where there was no medical/communications infrastructure. It could be argued that a shepherd in Afghanistan has little need of email, but his local hospital would find such an asset indispensable.

*Sure, you or I might sneer at a 386 or a 68040, but there are people in Brazil that don't even have electricity.

Another way that the recycling program disseminated tech was by loading linux onto every computer that went out the door. I have no interest in starting a pissing match over which OS is the best, but linux has three things going for it in this situation: zero cost, zero cost, and zero cost. What this meant to the end users, be it the government of Chile or some kid in Oakland, is that they will have full access to the world of computers. And, having been trained on linux, they may end up being the next generation of kernel contributors / opensource programmers.

In short, if you teach a person to fish, he can feed himself for a year. If you show him how to build a fishing pole, he may show his community how to make a fishing pole, and they can all eat.

11:11 / 26.06.04

I think that we are being a little naive here. The Governments of the world are as driven by profit as much as anybody else. Deals are done behind the scenes and sadly not always the best

Short term gain is put before common sense

Most notably, would the Mujahadin (however you spell it) have rocket launchers that are now being used against coallition troops in Afghanistan, if the US hadn't armed them in the 1980's?

Would Saddam have even had the technology to make poison gas or biological weapons, if the US and Britain hadn't given/sold him anthrax and nerve gas stockpiles in the eighties?

Israel has sold US technology to China.....our alleged ally but then again Clinton did fuck all when a US spy plane was forced down and the Chinese stripped it of valuable computer systems. It is all wheels within wheels...todays enemy is tomorrows friend and vice versa

Israel also robbed (ahem....sorry acquired) a computer system from the US (was it called 'Promise'?)

I can understand this from an enemy but for allies to do such dastardly deeds does make one wonder.

Talking of enemies etc Russia!

Russia gave China it's 'Sunburst' supersonic missiles, effectively ensuring that China has little to fear from US air force carriers if hostilities ever escalate

New Scientist in the UK have just ran an article stating that despite Nuclear Non proliferation treaties and hypocritically, the US and Europes stance on N Korea and Iran pursuing nuclear technology..... Britain and the US have been actively trading nuclear research for years ......whilst telling the rest of the world that such acts are against the rules!

So greed and self interest still have as much to play in the dissemination of info as anything else

09:04 / 28.06.04

Another means by which technology spreads is the tendency of less-developed nations to send their sons and daughters to the seats of power. I have seen this many times here in the U.S., and the tendedncy is as old as hegemony. The future leaders are sent to the seat of Empire to learn the Lingua Franca, diplomacy, and pick up some useful skills. This happened in Rome, and this happened with the Brittish Empire (Gandhi was trained as a lawyer in England). When the sons and daughters return home they spread the ideas, philosophies, technologies, tastes and habits they picked up while abroad. You might argue that Technology spreads the same way Culture does.

< threadrot > Joe, those are all good points, but consider the corollary:

The woman on the Mongolian Steppes who uses a parabolic mirror to cook her food and boil her water instead of having to rely on a wood fire.

The african farmer who can use solar panels or a refitted excercycle to power his house, instead of having to rely on a power company that may or may not see fit to string electrical cables into his area.

While the military is the main financier of technology and progress, it isn't the only one. I like to think that the developed countries can serve as a role-model as well as a warning. The technology developed in the U.S., Japan, the U.K. and elsewhere means that, if the leaders are enlightened enough, a developing country has the option of choosing solar power instead of nuclear or fossil fuels. < /threadrot >

16:21 / 28.06.04

I also think one of the factors in the apparent movement of technology is parallel evolution.

There is an international scientific community, who publish their research in journals of record. Anyone can read these journals.

Certain kinds of research projects will lend themselves to certain applications -- like, in his time, Marconi wasn't the only guy to come up with radio, he just got lucky in the patenting & publicity game. Lots of technological advances get "co-invented" by people who just pay attention to new research discoveries and think of a way to apply that research.

This probably also happens in low-tech/pirating levels too. Like that hack you used to be able to do by folding over an index card and slipping in into the cable box to get free movie channels -- I suspect (although I have no proof) that it wasn't one guy who discovered that, but a few cable repair guys or folks who manufactured the boxes who had some friends who they told, and word traveled out from there.

So, to address the summary question, you could predict the movement of technology by knowing who is reading what -- by knowing what the state of research is, what it's likely to imply in the world of applications, and what places have engineering-types who are into that specific field.