We use so many things but have we ever stopped and asked how did all this came about? How do i get all these things in the first place? Who is making these? Who are those people? Are they all engineers or scientists? What am i making that someone else will be using – intentionally and unintentionally on both the maker and the user’s side? Why do so many people study technology? Why do so many people make things? Why we need so many things in the first place? What causes a technology to develop? Is it that one fine day a person wakes up and says “I want to make this stuff that others will use.”? Or is it accidental? How much of the technology is actually accidental? Could it be true that most of the technologies weren’t intended to be used in the way we now use them? Could the makers foresee? What about those who made stuff but we dont know about them? …
The topic is not so much about how a particular technology works, but as to how technology as a phenomenon particular to this species work. Why do we engage with materials the way we do now? How did we do so earlier? Apart from the materials, what is the social and emotional construct of technology we carry around? … These are all very important questions i am sure others have asked and talked about, but I am only beginning to ask and see the world in this new light. Is it worth the light?
The confusion is where to begin the peeking from/into? If truth is a guide, its must be here and now. So could we begin with exploring how technology is affecting us now? I write on this piece made out of glorified earth (metal), sand (silicon) and remains of the dead (plastic). I ‘write’ is in itself a very deep word, rather i must use ‘punch’. I punch to keep my mind, lay before my view so that its easy to understand what i would like to do next. I look at a ‘screen’, a reflection of my own exercise in grappling with the task of describing the materials i use, the way i use them and feeling strange as to how deeply i am ignorant of the millions of ways i am using it, here and right now! Technology – an augmentation of our mind and body – overshadows our mind and body. Like my friend Yash (J) mentioned in a conversation about everything that we use/imagine/know is based on our memory of similar things, is based on the past as if our past describes what we experience at the moments or project into the future. So if technology surrounds all of this me, maybe i only know of what my augmented self (80% technology?) allows me to see? It’s as if the vocabulary of my cognitive bumbling is in itself an unexplored reflection of the augmentation – like a bug unaware that its actually a fish. For example a driver of a crane can not tend the garden rose, no matter what. Had the driver been without the crane augmented to itself, there could have been a hope. Likewise, what i say and talk and think (and not say or not talk or not think), is through the limitations/power of my augmented whole. What’s the difference between me and the augmented me? I don’t know all this, but damn its fun to acknowledge what i don’t know and allow oneself to feel awesomely small.
Keeping these philosophical bowel movements aside, could we then talk about practical world? A world i have to face tomorrow, kids looking towards a technologist expecting to get some wisdom as to what next cool thing to make – while the bug (which does not know its a fish) under the garb of the ‘technologist’ tries to put up an air of suspense around making, making-up a cover story to kill time. The topic is how technology works today. First we could begin with the safest way – ask questions to students and enjoy the beautiful answers. Ask a lot of them and its the break time. So, the questions would eventually lead to
- Engineers make technology
- Scientists invent new technologies
- Businessmen/women trade the technology and create and drive market.
- Consumers pay and get access to technology
Someone, brilliant in all other ways, will say but who creates the demand for technology? This could be another time-consuming (good for the bug/fish) discussion. Will probing result in a consensus? Consensus could be the business-person as the origin and sutradhar of it all. Or that an inspired scientist/engineer who sees the problem. Or a consumer who’s unhappy with the available technology.
Could the making and dissemination of technology be seen as a priced commodity product – traders hoarding it till demand increases and then releasing it to make profits? What may follow is the whole IP game and trade secrets things. In this light some open source concepts could be discussed.
One very important thing that i wish to discuss is the formal organization of technology development today. There are companies, government labs, NGOs, governments, bureaucrats, politicians and so on. Question could be for discussion: who are the participants in technology. A fundamental question here is also if technology development is in parallel to technology dissemination, but thats a philosophical question. So, how is technology organized?
- A company sees demand in a population.
- It measures how much is the demand, and estimates an expected profit of demand is met.
- Parallelly it also checks out of the demand can be met technologically.
- Either technology exists elsewhere.
- Or technology has to be developed based on previous technology.
- Either ways it estimates cost of ‘getting’the technology.
- Then it computes the cost of supplying the technology.
- The the cost of letting the needy know that
- Technology solution exists
- This company has that technology.
- How this company’s offer is better than other’s.
- How much would it cost to the needy.
- Then it computes the cost of distribution, sales and services.
- Then it compares it with market demand, competition, paying capacity of the customers and the value of the technology to the customers. Based on these calculations, subtracting all the manufacturing, marketing, sales and distribution costs, along with year long maintenance costs, stock of inventories, legal fees, future buffer, bank loan interests, anticipated/unanticipated market fluctuations decided on profit margin.
- If things go good, there is profit to the endeavor.
What the above approximate story line talks is how difficult it is to sustain in technology if one is starting afresh. So running after model technologies is the norm – where model of operation is established, proportions of cost and risk distributions are well known and market demand is fixed and known. Many things are known, and risk is minimum. Thus the part 1 of the above story is no longer relevant, unless the market is forced to consider it. This trend stereotypes commercial making in India, its not new need driven, a conservative needs company culture. But what happens when needs are not the same as yesterday? – Very important discussion.
OK, now how do companies ensure that they understand the conventional need driven market? Do they really need to if everything is set in the first place? Yes. Incremental needs are a mainstay, and one needs to always be ahead of the competition – a dynamic need. So they hire technical people to keep on the edge of technology – not on the bleeding edge but only as close as to not step into the murky and risky zone where blood spill is a reality. So these follower companies agressively follow trends and models pioneered by others – another mainstay of Indian companies – fashion. These fashion followers do good job of effective dessimination of new proven technologies. They survive dynamic competition by being a little more fashionable than the neighbor and at least creating an image of being so (check out any soaps/shampoo/food items in a mall, none is special but all survive virtually on price fights and emotional gullibility of the consumer).
So the question is what happens to real need that comes up from the potential consumer side? The latter is an interesting concept – will a potential consumer base develop unless it knows there will be a future company to solve its needs? Nonetheless, back to the question. Conventional companies wont touch or care about these needs. Fashion followers wont care unless the satisfying of the demand becomes a fashion. Who will care? Only stake holders are the needy, the government/politician who cares for his/her sustainability in the hands of the needy and some quirky entrepreneurs who look at short term profits driven by hearsay technologies (India is a big market for these passionate individuals and their tricks). In risk taking cultures, there are people who care about such new needs – the original makers. These could be risk-friendly companies, individuals, groups of friends who connect on projects.
But how do these people get into all this? Given the companies functioning listed above, its so hard to do business? That’s another set of model-innovation one has to do in this space. Government funds and venture capitalists play a significant role here. They pump in seed capital into the venture, expect the venture to be sustainable in some time and on its own, and in case of VC and bank loans, expect decent returns. All fine, provided the potential consumer base has paying capacity, or is in such large numbers that all costs are recovered through mass manufacture and so on. What if all this is not true?
Government and government innovation labs, educational institutions and NGOs are the last bet. They try nonetheless to address the needs of a non-profitable market – a market companies wont touch. Examples?