WEEK 14

TECHNOLOGICAL CHANGE & SOCIETY (1945-2009)

Dr.Sreeram Sundar Chaulia

Vice Dean
Jindal School of International Affairs
O.P.Jindal Global University
Sonipat, India
Office: A-125
Email: schaulia@jgu.edu.in
Medical Advancements &
Improvement in Life Indices
o Medical R&D; interventionist states that are
expected to give public health high priority;
attempted eradication of preventable diseases
like small pox, polio, tuberculosis and malaria;
new globalised contagions like avian flu, SARS,
swine flu etc. are posing fresh challenges to
health systems

o Higher health consciousness and nutrition

standards spread to the developing world;
greater female literacy rates in most parts of
the world helped in this cause.

o Life expectancy is on the rise worldwide, with

some exceptions (declining in southern Africa
due to AIDS pandemic)

o World population grew from 3 billion to 6

billion in 40 years (1960-2000) due to declining
death rates; Yet, there are unfinished
distributive struggles over access to adequate
healthcare; pharmaceuticals, insurance
companies, states and citizens are engaged in
constant health politics

o Why no cure yet for HIV AIDS? Has enough

R & D been allocated to this disaster? Racism?
Food Production & the Antidote to Malthus
o Malthusian Catastrophe (1798)- “the power of
population is indefinitely greater than the power in the
earth to produce subsistence for man.”

o Population growth was however not allowed by

technological developments to outpace agricultural
production, thanks to the Green Revolution (began by
Norman Borlaug in Mexico in 1943, spread to India and
the Philippines in the 1960s); new techniques of plant
breeding, irrigation and use of agro-chemicals turned
these highly populous countries from food aid
dependent to net food exporters

o Decolonisation and elected governments since the

end of World War II prevented mass famines (Sen’s
theory of accountability and famine)

o GM varieties- promoted as new solution to food

shortages; opposed by some on public health grounds
(EU has anti-GM trade policy)

o Why is there malnourishment and starvation despite

technological success in multiplying production?
Distribution politics, aid and unfair trade policies
Space Races & the Communications
Explosion
o Cold War security competition between
the US and USSR militarised outer space
but also helped build satellite-based
communications revolution; National space
programmes were launched across the
world and promoted by state elites as
integral to national pride and self-
confidence.

o Satellite television, meteorology, mobile

telephony, radio, water purification,
demining devices, cordless tools, medical
instruments etc are all gifts of inter-state
competition to go to space

o Weaponisation of space was the other

side of the dual-use coin; missile defence
shields, satellite-killers and “full spectrum
dominance” to rule the world pushed the
US and USSR, followed by the EU, China
and India to build infrastructure to engage
in outer space combat; wasteful
expenditure but justified in the name of
Technologies of Killing & Unintended
Consequences
 
o Military industrial complexes and the drive to
excel in means to kill and destroy- from
Eisenhower to George W Bush in the USA, the
paramount builder of advanced weapons; Russia,
China, Britain, France, Israel et al also have their
own complexes that are intertwined with politics;
globalisation of armaments production and their
link to wars and suffering

o Missile and WMD research reached

extraordinary heights in the last 60 years due to the
culture of ‘national assets’; Nuclear science is a
double-edged sword that can be used for power
generation and weapons; military aviation is a
counterpart of civil aviation- Boeing manufactures
civilian aircraft as well as fighter jets (now into ‘5 th
generation)

o ARPANET- the Internet grew out of US military

research in the 1960s on defending against ‘large
area attacks’; beneficial spin-off of empire?; should
more and more lethal defence research be
encouraged in the hope that it will have some
externalities that benefit humanity?
Information Age & the Knowledge Economy
o Why did the information technology (IT)
industry arise in the US rather than anywhere
else?
o America mastered the practice of merging
capitalist industry with the military and academe;
best example is Silicon Valley, where university
research, industry and the US defence sector come
together to generate incentives for cutting-edge IT
research; USSR could not compete with the
Americans in IT because it was not capitalist and
had strict controls on flow of information
o IT diffusion has happened in the last two
decades across the world; but a ‘digital divide’
remains: haves and have-nots; knowledge and
power go together and remain concentrated in the
Global North ; distribution politics is the key to
understanding the history of technological
innovation
o ‘Web 2.0 revolts’- Barack Obama and the
progressive potential of IT; also visible in the
politics of Thailand, Malaysia et al; ‘Great
Firewall’, ‘hacktivism’, ‘self-radicalisation’ and
www.jihad.com are darker sides of the IT
revolution.
The Meaning of Life in the Biotech Century
o The rise of genetic manipulation as the frontier
of science; backlash from conservatives as playing
God.

o Opposition from ecologists and defenders of

traditional knowledge against patenting and bio-
piracy
o Artificial intelligence in the era of technological
singularity; who will have access to the super-
intelligence chip?

o What will be the meaning of work, leisure,

calling, diversity and class in the 21st century if
there is a return to neo-eugenics technological
development?

o Can climate change and the environmental crisis

be solved through carbon sequestration and
capture?; Green technologies- photovoltaic cells,
solar panels, wind turbines etc.; Is nuclear energy
climate friendly?
o Who will make the decisions and calls on all
these vital questions for humanity? No alternative
to political mobilisation for popular control and
oversight of technology.