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The US President, Barack Obama in the
Presidential announcement speech said, "Let us be the generation that reshapes
our economy to compete in the digital age. Let us
set high standards for our schools and give them
the resources they need to succeed. Let us recruit
a new army of teachers, and give them better pay and more support in exchange for
more accountability. Let us make college more affordable, and let us invest in scientific
research, and let us lay down broadband lines through
the heart of inner cities and rural towns all
across America."
Back home, Prime Minister of India, Manmohan Singh as part of the Science
and Technology Policy (2003), of India stated, "We
take satisfaction from the fact that over 100
global companies have come to India to set up
Research and Development (R&D) centers, affirming
the intellectual capital of our scientific and engineering community. Science must
grapple with the key challenges facing the country
today. These include the pressures of increasing
the population, greater health risks, changing demographics, degraded natural resources,
and dwindling farmlands. We need new Science and Technologies (S&Ts), new priorities and
new paradigms to address these fundamental challenges. We in India are practicing new
physics and new chemistry to make new materials.
These are of direct relevance to the Millennium Development Goals of the United Nations."
These words from the heads of two powerful nations enunciate the immense
transformative power of S&T. Although the current and
emerging needs of the two nations are very different,
the acknowledgement that S&T forms the basis
of economic progress remains common.
We live in a technology-driven world where rapid development of technology has become
a way of life. Technology has continued to play a pivotal role in the expansion of human
endeavors, whether as an individual, organization or a
nation, towards gaining a competitive edge in the
global marketplace. Human civilization has grown at
a swift pace with the help of innovation and application in the field of S&T. In the last
four decades, there have been some major breakthroughs in the field of S&T that
have impacted various aspects of human life. It
has always been a challenge to manage the
innovation of S&T to put it to the greatest human benefit.
With our growing dependence on technology and the rapidity with which technology expansion
is taking place, it has become a challenge to
manage this technological development for
producing defined results that lead to human advantage.
In this backdrop, technology management is fast becoming the focus point of development and
is going to play a crucial role in the coming years. |
