Greater understanding of technology required

Press, 25 May 1985, Page 18

Greater understanding of technology required

The description of a possible future for New Zealand as “a slum with scenery” caught the attention of many readers when it was first used at a seminar on technology and management in Wellington earlier this month. The person who coined the phrase was a Christchurch engineer, Mr CHARLES G. MARTIN, who expands on his argument in this article.

The scientific method is a powerful philosophical idea which appeared without apparent cause in Europe about 500 years ago. Its first large-scale use was the highly successful exploration of the globe by the Portugese, starting in 1418, and finishing with Magellan’s circumnavigation of the world a century later.

Science has had an impact on human affairs far exceeding that of any other philosophical method. Its strength lies in its power of accurate prediction, which much reduces the labour of empirical trial and error.

The English language reflects British attitudes to science and technology. Only in English is the word "engineer” applied to the professional and to the enginedriver. Only in English can the word “science” be opposed to the word “arts.” In other languages “engineer” is a title, like “doctor,” and the word for science means simply “knowledge.” , Another symptom of the English

disease is a tendency to produce well-researched reports on technological subjects, then to forget them.

The British Government set up a Royal Commission on Technical Instruction. Reporting on “the widespread concern about the capacity of British industry to stand up to European competition,” it recommended that “no portion of the national expenditure on education is of greater importance than that employed in the scientific culture of the leaders of industry.” Nothing much happened but perhaps there is yet time. The commission reported in 1876. Our social heredity is British, and the English disease is endemic in New Zealand as a low-level but quite widespread infection. It has been suggested that we might cure it, in industry at least, by large doses of research and development. Well, perhaps. So what are research and development, and how do they work? Research, like vitamins, is generally believed to be good for you,

but in both instances large overdoses can be expensive, useless, or even harmful.

The product of research is new knowledge, and it is commonly believed that new knowledge potentiates invention. Unfortunately this belief is false, for two reasons. First, it misrepresents the relationship between science and technology. Science arose out of technology, not technology out of science, and only in restricted areas has science advanced far enough to repay its debts. Second, the factual evidence does not support the view that new knowledge leads to innovation. Investigations have shown that the usual stimulus to innovation is not new knowledge — it is nearly always a costly problem to be solved, or a profitable opportunity to be grasped; in short, a technical problem evaluated in economic terms.

The activity known, rather unsuitably, as "pure” research requires comment. Pure scientific research is a creative cultural activity, like poetry or art, and this is ample justification for its support by society. The fact that a little of the new knowledge so created is later found to be useful is not relevant.

Not unnaturally, scientists much prefer the calm and freedom of the research laboratory to the taut discipline of “overcoming costly problems” and “seizing profitable

opportunities,” and they have been known to cry out quite immoderately when asked to justify their keep. If they are practising pure science, they shouldn’t have to, but if they claim that their work is of economic value, the ordinary rules of cost-benefit analysis must apply. To practice innovation in industry, they must work under the disciplines of time and cost. They must be able to recognise the “costly problems” and the “profitable opportunities” when they meet them, and then they must have the necessary authority to take prompt action.

Researchers shut up like white mice in a box in the head office R and D department, or in a Government laboratory, certainly cannot do this. They are more likely to waste their time, and someone’s money, by producing learned papers that have no effect on affairs, or developing inventions that never find an economic niche in the market-place. Only those close to management in industry and government are in a position to take action, and they can do this only if they are technologically literate. Technological literacy does not mean that they must have a degree in engineering or science, and indeed some of our engineering degrees, and many of our science degrees, have become so specialised that they (certainly do not confer technological literacy.

For the professional engineer or scientist, technological literacy requires a wide general understanding of the basic principles and the mode of reasoning of science: a professional competence maintained and developed by association with fellows in learned society activity and by independent study; a sufficient understanding of society to be able to weave technology into the social fabric. For the manager who does not have formal training in science or technology, there are excellent journals which present the world of science and technology to the nonspecialist. He can also build up a circle of trusted advisers, inside or outside his company. The one thing that he must never do is to allow his advisers to make the decisions for which he is responsible.

It is instructive to look at the training and education of managers in economies that have performed better than ours. A study of the top three executives in 20 large Japanese companies showed that more than two-thirds of them had degrees in engineering or the physical sciences, and that none of them — not one — had qualified in accounting or law. Another study showed that 60 per cent to 80 per cent of the top executives in Continental European Market companies were graduates in engineering or physical science, compared with an estimated 5 per cent In Britain.

A third study turned up the odd fact that Japan graduates five engineers for each scientist. In Germany, the ratio is three to one, and in the United States, two to one. In Britain it is 0.7 to one, and in New Zealand, 0.25 to one. This suggests that there might be something wrong with the funding of our education industry. The Government can help by adjusting the social and fiscal environment to favour those who create wealth and give employment, and by helping the education industry to produce technologically literate men and women; but the Government cannot solve all industry’s problems — we have to do it ourselves.

The forces which make for innovation are so numerous and intricate that they are as dimly comprehended as was the working of the human body 500 years ago. The Government, therefore, in seeking to encourage innovation should set down as its first aim the avoidance of harm, of inadvertently checking what they are seeking to stimulate. We do not and never will live in Fortress New Zealand — we are in competition with the world. In the last few years, we have come close to resigning from the club of developed nations. Only hard work, and a drastic overhaul of our attitudes to technology, to management, and to management-em-ployee relations can make our subscription current once more.