The turtle in the knowledge age
On my way from Cluj to Iasi I stopped at
the Carrefour supermarket in Brasov. On the scroll of the commercials cable
TV near the cash registers, one could see the latest news:
”the oldest being on Earth, a Galapagos turtle, died at the age of 250”.
In geology, my job, 250 years could hardly to represented on the scale of
time, but for the human beings it represents something – but what?
I think that a correct answer would be:
the changes of states turned to stone in an overtaken project. When the
Galapagos turtle was born, France was under Ludovic the XVI’s, “le Bien-aimé”,
absolute monarchy and, in Iasi, Constantin Racoviţă was the Principle of
Moldavia. In both situations the interest in Galapagos turtle was null. When
the Galapagos turtle died, the informational society has been sending the
news worldwide, in real time, and the high technology and the scientifical
research, which both could have told us even the month when it was born,
have remembered us that we already were in the knowledge age. Prof. François
Peccoud asked us to replace our theoretical digressions with personal
experiences through a notice sent by Internet to all the participants at the
round table. As the changes become faster and faster, the changes of a
person’s life may become useful to the young generation, which is tempted to
believe that many of the contemporary society features have always existed.
Under one condition: for us to accept that interesting is not what we have
lived, but what we have learnt from that.
I was born in the year when the Second
World War burst out. I lived under a royal dictatorship, under an extreme
right military dictatorship, under a communist dictatorship with soviet
occupation, under a national communist dictatorship, I have participated in
a popular anti-communist riot and I hope to live the rest of my life in a
Romania integrated in the European Union. I have entered the University at
17 years not reached, and now I still am there; excepting 4 years, I never
left that place, being all my life researcher and a professor. If million of
historians deal with wars and political and social phenomena, the changes in
research and innovation enjoy a sporadic attention. At 6 months I have
extricated by miracle from scarlet fever. Only in 1945, when I was 6 years,
Fleming received the Nobel Prize and the penicillin started to be produced
at industrial scale.
When I was 1 year, General Electric
launched the refrigerator with freezing compartment which would produce a
food revolution. When I was 7, CBS made the first color broadcast in the US,
but only when I was 17 I saw the first black-and-white TV. I was 11 years
when Marion Donovan invented the Pampers nappies, but only my grandchildren
have used them. I was 30 when the fist men landed on the Moon, but 59 when I
received a little flag of Romania from NASA, which was held in space. I was
35 when there were made the first computers for big consumers, 42 when the
PC appeared and 51 when I used one for the fist time. I was 41 when Motorola
manufactured the first mobile phone and 55 when I had a personal one.
You will see that in all the cases I was
talking about using them on large scale, as only that can bring important
changes to the human society. One could also notice the time gap between the
achievement of technological news and the moment they reach several places
on earth. In this respect, we talk about the information society and the
knowledge society. Starting with the antiquity, the Egyptian, Greek, Indian,
Chinese then Arabic and Inca societies were each at its turn the knowledge
Society? No, because when we talk about the knowledge society, we talk about
enlarging the public knowledge space, especially due to the Internet. It
does not mean the disappearance of cognitive fractures, but new chances for
new actors.
The research and innovation systems
encouraging a strong and sustainable development, both North and South
benefiting from them, are at the crossroad of the scientific, economic and
politic sectors. These are the conditions in which the science and
technology can contribute to building a knowledge society, which should
count on including and participation of a large audience.
In order to make a good use of the
resources, it is necessary to make a difference between research and the
routine fields, often taken as research: design, documentation, etc. Then it
is necessary a strict evaluation of each field, depending on at least three
criteria: modernity degree, competitiveness and excellence of each
component, national and international success and acknowledgement chances,
the importance of ulterior development of that field. And, finally, the
necessary costs and means. Only at the end of this evaluation becomes
possible to elaborate a sustainable development research policy. It is hard
to conceive that Romania could develop all the research directions at real
competition parameters without selection, as well as it is not conceivable
that a ministerial and accountant bureaucracy still decide upon priorities.
The academic community is the only one able to ask these questions and to
establish the directions and support degrees of different direction and
programs. No doubt, these decisions should respect extremely rigorous and
objective criteria, to have in mind the tradition and perspectives of each
field. A strong cooperation within the Francophone Universitary Agency could
lead to a better priorities evaluation and setting, related to top and
perspective fields worldwide, and to assure a much detailed perspective than
any other university upon the competitiveness degree.
I do not think I am wrong when I state
that the training and developing the human resources is essential for
humanity, as there is no technology to assure the development of women and
men using it. We speak about convincing the political factors of an obvious
fact, but often neglected: social costs of the lack of information are
infinitely greater than those of a quality education. The meeting of today
represents itself a sign of the educational problems globalization, which
undoubtedly remain the most powerful action way in the field of human
resources training. Therefore, I consider that two essential observations
could be made: on one hand, the scientific and technologic transfer should
not take place without a transfer of abilities to use them, but also of a
values system which involves using them accordingly. On the other hand, the
endowment and technology differences are not coextensive to the human
endowment gaps.
The situation of the South Eastern Europe
countries in general and especially of Romania proves my point of view: in
spite of the local delay Romania was subjected to during the last half of
the century, it preserved its formation networks, which allowed the survival
of an intellectual and cultural potential, not connected to the material
resources hardly touched by an aberrant politics, which offer them the
chance of a faster development towards the European Union standards.
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