Cultural challenges to technology transfer

Summary

It often seems as if development is led by technology, and those countries and individuals with the greatest power are those with access to the most powerful technology. But technology is a part of human culture, and different cultures may treat technology in very different ways, with different cultural groups attaching different symbolic values to the same sorts of technology. Given the rapid development of technology, supported by both public and private institutions, one major challenge to societies is how to incorporate new technologies into their cultures, so that their traditional values are maintained and enhanced while the new technologies enable more productive and sustainable relationships with the environment. It is apparent that technical actions and changes in technology are both determined by social relations that go far beyond mere action on matter, and simultaneously provide the basis for such relations. In many cultures, different parts of technology are controlled by different sectors of the society, but other forms of technology are becoming much more wide-spread; the new forms of information technology are an important example of the “democratization” of technology. It is apparent that cultural relations and power still decide what is acceptable to adopt and what is rejected. That said, much evidence indicates the pragmatism of most people, and with reasonable care cultural sensitivities can be addressed when introducing new technologies. The various cultural responses to the introduction of new biotechnologies indicate how different cultural concerns are addressed in different parts of the world, and how such issues might be addressed within the context of the Convention on Biological Diversity. The intention is to find ways to enable the various cultures in the world to develop in ways that they consider appropriate, without losing their cultural integrity.

Key Words:

• technology transfer
• cultural sensitivity
• democratization
• biotechnology
• information technology
• social relations