Dr. M.M. Joshi (Contd. from the last issue)

I have had the occasion to delve elsewhere on the implications of the experiments of David Bohm, of Clauser and Freedman, of Alain Aspect and the mathematical explanation of J.S. Bell, further confirmed by Jack Sarfatti, Henry Strap and Gary Zukov and how their conclusions come strikingly close to the insights offered in our Upanishadic thought. This is a subject dear to my heart but tempting though it is, today is not the occasion to demonstrate the parallels between modern physics and ancient Indian texts. I merely wish to highlight the limits of that scientific method to which our technological processes owe allegiance to and that as much as science has come to question the myth of scientific certainties it is time to question the myth of social, political and ethical neutrality of technology.

Technological education needs to be built in a continuous, almost subversive, critique of technology as it has evolved so far to be able to grow in socially useful ethical, and human directions. What is true of the limits of science is equally true of the limits of technology. The mathematical physicist, Paul Davies, has come to the conclusion, as have so many others—“But in the end a rational explanation for the world in the sense of a closed and complete system of logical truths is almost certainly impossible. We are barred from ultimate knowledge, from ultimate explanation, by the very rules of reasoning that prompt us to seek such an explanation in the first place. If we wish to progress beyond, we have to embrace a different concept of ‘understanding’ from that of rational explanation. Possibly the mystical path is a way to such an understanding.

May be that mystical experience provides the only route beyond which the limits to which science and philosophy can take us, the only possible path to the Ultimate’— (Paul Davies—the Mind of God): It is not my intention to drive technological education towards mystical modes of inquiry, but only to labour the point that since the scientific basis of technology is coming under such searching questioning, it is necessary to similarly raise fundamental questions about the nature of our technological processes and the directions of technology growth. It is interesting to reflect on how the most significant technological development of our times in computation and communication—I am referring to the internet—is bringing about a fundamental change in our imagery, our language and vocabulary and the means by which individuals, communities and societies relate to one another. First the image of the universe as a giant machine consisting of many parts, is being replaced by the image of the universe as a vast neural and completely interconnected network.

 Second, the language of common parlance increasingly speaks of a knowledge society, knowledge capital, knowledge industry, knowledge governance, rather than of Information Technologoy—in other words ‘Information’ and ‘Technology’ are in themselves useless unless they get converted to knowledge. The ascendancy of the mind over the machine. Third connectivity, conviviality, creativity and conservation have become the most sought after values. The creation of material wealth by ceaseless and rapacious exploitation of energy and resources is being increasingly replaced by the creation of knowledge wealth. A small group of creative individuals can today create in a weeks time the wealth that it took large industrial conglomerates of the past, decades to accumulate.

Technology has shaken our notions of economics. Is this a mere bubble which will be burst any moment now? I do not think so because these developments have restored the centrality of human being, of his close interconnectedness with Nature and the Universe to the mainstream of societal processes. This was a desperately needed corrective to the goal of technological growth as an end in itself and it is indeed paradoxical that like Nature, technology itself has engineered and fashioned its own corrective. The restoration of the paramountcy of the human mind and the recognition of its role as the prime mover, the engine of growth is a development of overwhelming significance for the Indian civilization. As a civilization we can differentiate ourselves from many others by the extra-ordinary sophistication, complexity and richness of our traditions of the pursuit of knowledge. At a time thousands of years ago, when many societies were still struggling to negotiate the basics of material existence, we already had a body of thought and knowledge which was breathtaking in its range—cosmology, astronomy, mathematics, linguistics and grammar, logic, ethics, aesthetics, architecture—there was not a branch of human thought which had not been irradiated by the rays of human brilliance.

 We never had a distinction between religious and scientific thought because our way of life was governed not by primitive awe, superstition, dogma and doctrine but by a civilizational awareness of that deep and meaningful resonance between the human mind and the underlying organization of the natural world. I cannot recall any other society, which has throughout its history accorded such primacy to the quest for knowledge, untrammelled and unbounded by theocracy. The western notion of a conflict between religion and science, a conflict which so many modern scientific thinkers from Whitehead, to Fred Hoyle to Stephen Hawking, have tried to reconcile, never existed in the Indian mind, because our culture, our way of life, our religion was always a scientific quest, a journey into the unknown.

 The reason why I am emphasizing our primary civilizational characteristic is because I believe that every society inherits a certain ‘genetic software’ and that in our case we have inherited our traditions of pursuit of knowledge, including the pursuit of knowledge qua knowledge as our genetic software. This gives us an unparalleled edge to emerge as a formidable power in a globalized, networked environment. Some years ago the British socialist historian, E.P. Thompson, was struck by this civilizationial characteristic and remarked thus—“India is not an important but perhaps the most important country for the future of the world. Here is a country that merits no one’s condescension. All the convergent influences of the world run through this society: Hindu, Muslim, Christian, Secular, Stalinist, Liberal, Maoist, Democratic Socialist, Gandhian. There is not a thought being thought of in the West or East which is not active in some Indian mind” .

When we view this heritage in the context of a knowledge economy; when we realise that this heritage is not the preserve of a few and that is every Indian, however poor by standards of conventional economics, we have a repository of traditional knowledge of astonishing richness, we know the task before our technologists. It should become our bounden duty to harness the technological means available to us to convert every knowledge holder into a dynamic producer of knowledge—not merely a passive recipient of information created by others but a creator, a generator, an entrepreneur of content. This places a demand on our scientists and technologists to make technology available, accessible, affordable and controllable.

The question before you has to be whether you will be in a position to respond boldly and imaginatively to this demand placed on you. Notwithstanding the remarkable potential of the new technologies, we have to be constantly vigilant about the social consequences of technology. I have already argued that the myth of social, cultural and ethical neutrality of technology is a myth perpetuated by an industrial and consumerist form of social organisation. We know well that technology has often led to the oppression and the manipulation of the individual, to the widespread destruction of the natural environment and the depletion of the world's finite supply of natural resources.

 At the same time, technological skills have so far failed to provide effective solutions to many of the worlds major problems, in particular those of mass poverty, starvation and international conflict. I quote from David Dickson, ‘Fuel shortages and power cuts have made man aware of the precariousness of his technological existence. Weapons of mass destruction have provided a sinister back-cloth against which international power struggles are acted out. The individual in contemporary society feels himself increasingly trapped by powerful forces outside his control. He is reduced to little more than an economic cipher, continuously and uncomprehendingly manipulated within a vast inhuman complex. Technology, originally developed as a means of raising man above a life of poverty, drudgery and ill-health, now shows its other face as a major threat to his sanity and survival.

 Not surprisingly many have begun to feel that our technological society has opened the real Pandora's box, and is finding itself rapidly overcome by the content’—(David Dickson-Alternative Technology and the Politics of Technical Change). The two factors which have had the greatest impact on circumscribing the unchecked advance of the technological juggernaut are the emergence of environmental and gender concerns to the forefront of public policy and action. The poisoning of river systems by industrial effluents, the lung diseases induced by atmospheric pollution, the desertification of vast tracts of land, the disappearance of tropical rainforests and mangroves, the sclerosis of our cities caused by the private motor car have brought home the perils and the tyranny of modern technology with great force. Community and peoples led resistance to the onslaught of technology has led to a global movement demanding ecological sustainability to be the cornerstone of all economic action whether on the part of Governments or the private firm.

Such has been the power of the green movements that today even the most die-hard supporters of high energy consumption have to accept green constraints as imposing limits to technology growth. The real challenge among our technologists, however, is not merely to accept environmental and ecological considerations as constraining forces but to alter the way in which we think and design technology. Developments in the field of solar energy, of hydrogen fuel-cells, bio-fertilizers, herbal cures, bio-diversity conservation, water-harvesting, are all pointers to the directions in which technology must advance. The concept of sustainability has now acquired ready currency. However, it is not possible to speak of sustainable development unless we first address the issue of sustainable consumption. As long as the ideal of unlimited consumption as a measure of progress remains, technology will continue to exercise its tyranny in its attempts to meet the ever-expanding demands of human greed and rapacity.

 To change patterns of consumption we need to (a) develop respect for nature and the limits imposed by it as sacred (b) recognize that ethnical values are absolute and that we need the ability to discriminate between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ technology and (c) bring about a shift in control and power over technological processes from the private firm to the community, the family and the responsible individual. The developments in Information Technology, especially the miniaturization of technology and the ability to be fully networked enables us to acquire greater control over production processes, but the same technology can also be used by giant corporates to create an Orwellian nightmare. Issues of social control, of ethical regulation, of innovative management, of moving from a strategy-structure-systems model to the purpose-process-people model, of protecting traditional knowledge systems from predator firms, are now the central issues for technology governance and as future technologists I urge you to engage in these fundamental issues.

Universities are the fora where new ideas take shape and minds are liberated from conditioning and are taught to be free. Jawaharlal Nehru said, “A University stands for humanism, for tolerance, for reason, for progress, for the adventure of ideas and for the search of truth. It stands for the onward march of the human race towards ever higher objectives. If the Universities discharge their duties adequately, then it is well with the nation and the people. But, if the temple, of learning itself becomes a home of narrow bigotry and petty objectives, how then will the nation progress or a person grow in stature?.” We as Indians have to rise above the narrow bigotry and prejudice and project once again our ideal of the world being one family.