Future of Engineering
Wednesday, March 5, 2008
What will fuel future global development?
By Jeffrey Sachs, The Scotsman
The goal is to focus attention on the potential of technology to help the world address poverty and environmental threats. The list includes potential breakthroughs such as low-cost solar power, safe disposal of from power plants, nuclear fusion, new educational technologies, and the control of environmental side-effects from nitrogen fertil.
We are used to thinking about global cooperation in fields such as monetary policy, disease control or nuclear weapons proliferation. We are less accustomed to thinking of global cooperation to promote new technologies, such as clean energy, a malaria vaccine or drought-resistant crops to help poor African farmers.
By and large, we regard new technologies as something to be developed by businesses for the marketplace, not as opportunities for global problem-solving. Yet, given the enormous global pressures that we face, including vastly unequal incomes and massive environmental damage, we must find new technological solutions to our problems.
Full story here
The goal is to focus attention on the potential of technology to help the world address poverty and environmental threats. The list includes potential breakthroughs such as low-cost solar power, safe disposal of from power plants, nuclear fusion, new educational technologies, and the control of environmental side-effects from nitrogen fertil.
We are used to thinking about global cooperation in fields such as monetary policy, disease control or nuclear weapons proliferation. We are less accustomed to thinking of global cooperation to promote new technologies, such as clean energy, a malaria vaccine or drought-resistant crops to help poor African farmers.
By and large, we regard new technologies as something to be developed by businesses for the marketplace, not as opportunities for global problem-solving. Yet, given the enormous global pressures that we face, including vastly unequal incomes and massive environmental damage, we must find new technological solutions to our problems.
Full story here
Labels: Society
PermaLink - What will fuel future global development? posted by Ecacofonix : 5:13 AM
