Meaningless Lists of ‘Critical’ Technologies
Drawing inspiration from both Santa Claus and People magazine, the champions of competitiveness are making up lists and checking them twice.
These lists--generated with much fanfare by the good folks at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, the Commerce Department and the industry-based Council on Competitiveness, among others--are intended to show which technologies are naughty and nice. In other words, what are the 25 Most Intriguing Technologies? Where is the United States ahead and Japan behind? What is the Sexiest Technology Alive? Inquiring minds want to know.
They’ll find no titillating technologies here. The National Critical Technologies Panel (mandated by Congress and appointed by White House Science Adviser D. Alan Bromley), for example, selected no fewer than 22 technologies “deemed critical to the national needs that have been identified.” These included software, biotechnology, pollution minimization and remediation, high-definition imaging and displays, ceramics, composites and several other obvious candidates.
Come on! This is techno-pablum being served up as meaningful analysis. Saying that “software” is a critical technology is precisely like saying that physics is a critical science. It’s true, but so what? Does listing software--or biotechnology or composites--as a critical technology give one any sense of how to prioritize research in the area? Does it offer any insights into the commercialization process? Does it send any kind of meaningful message to the investment community about how resources should be best allocated?
Of course not. What we have here is “information” that adds virtually nothing to the debate over the critical issues surrounding America’s massive public and private investments in technology. Your tax dollars at work. (Calls to the chairman of the White House panel were not returned.)
By the way, don’t think that it’s simply a happy coincidence that federal funding for most of these “critical technologies” just happens to have been increased. These lists aren’t just obvious; they’re also politically correct. There’s nothing challenging, counter-intuitive or provocative about them.
“I don’t think these lists have any intrinsic merit at all,” asserts Michael Odza, a technology transfer consultant and publisher of the Berkeley-based Technology Access Report. “They don’t seem to change people’s thinking in any way.”
“In general, lists force people to give at least some level of priority,” says Robert Costello, an undersecretary of defense in the Reagan Administration who championed using Pentagon procurement policies as a prod to industrial competitiveness. “But, if you don’t explicitly link them to an action agenda, they’re pretty marginal.”
These lists are as marginal as they come. If you wanted to write something important, you wouldn’t make a list of the nouns, verbs and adjectives you planned to use; you’d figure out what you really wanted to say. The problem here is that people are focusing on the technologies rather than on the economic, industrial, governmental and scientific processes that create them.
America isn’t the undisputed global leader in software because the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, IBM and Microsoft sat around in their respective offices coming up with lists of critical systems software and applications to develop. This country dominates the field because it evolved the appropriate infrastructures of hardware, capital, academic research and entrepreneurs that stimulate state-of-the-art innovations.
Technology isn’t a product. It’s a process--but you’d never know it from scanning these lists.
“We never make up lists,” says Michael C. Sekora, who once ran the Pentagon’s Project Socrates technology planning support software and is now providing support to American technology firms as president of Florida-based Technology Strategic Planning. “Coming up with a list has no value. Instead of coming up with a list, you need a strategic plan.”
Plans don’t begin with lists of “critical” technologies, says Sekora; they begin with an objective--”and then you figure out how you’re going to effectively utilize worldwide technology to achieve that objective.”
It’s at that point that you begin to make the hard decisions about what technologies should be internally developed, externally acquired or jointly created with partners. Competitiveness comes from the ability to cost-effectively balance these different technology paths.
Needless to say, the various critical technologies lists barely touch the issue of cost-effectiveness. What price is America prepared to pay to be “competitive” in new materials and biotechnology? Will this price be borne by taxpayers? Or will innovative government policies put industry in a position to cost-effectively compete in global high-tech markets by better leveraging existing resources?
There’s no way to know the answers to those questions because they aren’t being asked. Instead of thought-provoking ideas, we’re getting laundry lists of technological cliches. That’s hardly shocking. But cliches do nothing to boost either our awareness or competitiveness. The real debate isn’t about which technologies are economically important; it’s about how best to manage those technologies to boost the quality of national life.
