Sci&Tech History

“Turning technology into a tool for human development often requires purposive effort and public investment to create and diffuse innovations widely. Investment in creating, adapting and marketing products that poor people can afford or need is inadequate because their incomes are too low and do not present a market opportunity for the private sector.” (UNDP 2001, 43)

Revolution industry which initiated by James Watt invention has delivers production into the next step: mass scale. Mass production allow us to buy product with a lower price but is also rise labor class which widening gap between capital class and labor class. Marxist, Smith, Keynesian economist try to explain and solve this condition with several approaches, and in some country, choosing one of the approaches can be success. In the same time, there is a duality from the country when it deals with other country. In their own country, they use a closed system to protect their local market, while when they make an engagement with others; they exploit the resources from the other countries.

Where is the influence of technology then? Before answering the question, we have to reflect it to our self first, what is on your mind when you hear the word technology? Hand phone, internet, and computer? Well, those artifacts are technology that we get from foreign tradition, while in Indonesia; we know indigenous knowledge like the Badui do to warm their body in the cold night, or preventing their nature. It is an indigenous knowledge which stabilized by technology that they have by heritage. While mass production is a culture that we get from the foreign. Can it fit with our culture? What should we do to make it happened in order to facing the global market?

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