Identifying Essential Properties of Today’s Science and Technology via Historical Perspectives

• In Event: National Identities and Transnational Science and Technology during the 20th Century: Historical Perspectives

Abstract

The phenomenal unfolding of science, technology, and innovation in the last several years, sometimes dubbed “the Fourth Industrial Revolution,” has been a source of great expectation as well as concern in today’s world. However, any dispassionate analysis of the essential nature of today’s science and technology would need sound historical perspectives, because today’s science and technology has to a large extent resulted from the massive, continuous postwar investment in R&D by governments and corporations. This paper is an attempt to present a version of such macro historical perspectives, by integrating the literature on the history of postwar science and technology. It identifies six main historical threads: (1) growth in the size and complexity of technological systems under the Cold War, (2) relativization of scientific and technological authority in the age of détente, (3) increased concern for economic values of science and technology in the context of trade war, (4) trend for networked science and technology in the globalizing world, (5) heightened risk consciousness accompanying the maturation of democracy, (6) vocal espousal of innovation by developed countries afflicted with deepening sense of crisis. These six trends, reflecting the political, economic, and cultural imperatives of respective times, have left marks on the overall properties of contemporary science and technology. This paper will thus propose a crude and preliminary yet holistic way to understand the historically-shaped structure of today’s science and technology, combining historical and policy scholarships in STS.

Author

• Yasushi Sato, Japan Science and Technology Agency