WilliamsMemo39

Broadly conceived, I believe that there is a dysfunction in the way that technical problem solvers (be it engineers, scientists, surgeons, policy-makers, public administrators, etc) who are trained in the Western educational system imagine and then constrain their technical problems for outside of that system. I think that this dysfunction has been described in different ways by different theorists, but that no one has really offered a solution. I am really hoping and praying that by focusing on neoliberal modernity as an influence throughout the book (I have not finished reading Harvey and I have not done any fieldwork so I can't be sure) I will be able to point this out in a myriad of ways, small and large, subtle and obvious, so that this dysfunction is quite clear to all who read. I want to beat-up on 'ignorance' as a category and then perhaps offer 'information' as a policy prescription (where my specific meaning on information is more like cultural indoctrination training !?!?!). Information alone seems such an unsatisfactory prescription -- we have plenty of it already and (as part of neoliberalism) we have had a lot of it since at least the 1980s. But we are not using it well (we seem to repeat the same mistakes as from the green revolution !?!). I have to think more about this (and do some fieldwork too.)
 * Williams Memo 39 Political Implications**

I also hope that by the end of doing this work on technology transfer (which will probably consume me across topical areas for the next 10 or 15 years) I will have some generic policy prescription in mind that is interesting and 'universal.' As in the universal way to go about being locally relevant in technology transfer. Heh.