Republic of virtue, 7/09

Must we (still) become a bio-tech nation? PDF Print
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Thursday, 30 July 2009 13:05

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Technology is artifact. Artifacts have creators. Creators are people. And people have politics. Where will technological determinism as ideology be if we could name the shadows on the wall of the cave?

Azly Rahman
http://azlyrahman-illuminations.blogspot.com/2009/07/malaysia-no-longer-tanah-melayu.html

Sometime ago, at the height of the Abdullah Administration's fascination with bio-technology, I wrote this piece below. Now the present government is renewing its interest in "bio-technologizing" Malaysia. Do we understand the philosophy of science and public policy, in an age of dependency and borrowing, appropriating, and imitating that displaces local culture and endangers the environment?
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The brand name for the current administration, besides ‘Towering Malays’ is ‘Bio-Tech Malaysia
’. This is to give a brand new national-ideological identity to replace the previous regime’s economic branding in the name ‘Info Tech’ Malaysia, symbolically architectured in the landscape of the Multimedia Super Corridor (MSC).

But are we generating public discourse on the issue of technology and social change, and inquire into the fundamental nature of technology as a shaper and reformer of social relations of production? Have we carefully analysed who the global owners of the means of developing, deploying, and domesticating technology are, and who benefits from the ‘glocalisation’ of high-tech, at the expense of those at the receiving end?

Do we understand the ‘scientistic’ or ‘pseudo-scientistic’ language of this new wave in economic development? What do these new names, for instance, of ‘designer-genes of agro-business’ crops mean to the farmer in Sik, Kedah or Tambun Tulang, Perlis? How do they participate in the dialogue that will impact their livelihood? Will they remain as vulnerable and as silent as they have been, since the times of the Malay feudal economic system hundreds of years before the advent of Bio-Tech Malaysia?

Are we not aware of the stories of how genetically-altered crops are a threat to the environment? Do we no study reports coming from the advanced nations concerning the ethics of bio-technology? Are members of the proposed International Advisory Panel wise enough to see into the Malaysian future? Can they predict what will happen when a nation embraces the ideology of technological determinism, such as in the case of large scale transformations in the past: agricultural economies of scale, industrialisation, high-tech informational industries, and now bio-technology?

Is there not at all a raging debate amongst the natives in Malaysia, among our esteemed professors in the academic circles, among public intellectuals, among leaders of grassroots movements, among advocates of participatory democracy, and progressive opinion leaders of the urgent need to debate on the topic: should we or should we not bio-technologise? What ever happened to our modernisation process? Whatever is happening to our understanding and remedies of digital divide? What are we trying to achieve with this new global-local-corporate venture called bio-tech?

We ought to, as a nation, be worried. We ought to have a national debate on ‘dependency’. We must explore what modern-day dependency means. We must have our politicians read Paul Baran, Immanuel Wallerstein, Johann Galtung, Andre Gunder Frank, Christopher Chase Dunn, or even Che Guevara and Paulo Freire in order to understand the structural violence we will continue to create in the name of economic development. But we must explore this question: what is technology and how does it change social relations of production?

"Our Frankenstein"

We need to clearly articulate our relationship with technology. Is technology under our control? Or are we in fact controlled by it? We need to learn how to situate technology with the life we ought to live. We need to understand the periods in our history in which we uncritically adopt technology, transfer expertise, accept foreign aid – all in the name of development and modernisation.

In the 1950s, we hailed the sewing machine as an invention of wonder, albeit its role in displacing the human person and its function as an instrument of mechanical production which then breeds among others, high fashion. We imported this technology.

In the 1960s we looked in awe as the Caterpillar machine bulldozed its way through our padi fields, at the height of the introduction of new grains such a padi Appollo (even this name is ideological and sounds fantastic) and at the height of technology transfer from the Robert McNamara’s World Bank. We imported this ideology.

In the 1970s, we transformed the national economies into large scale agricultural industries under the Felda scheme, in the overall scheme of developmentalist economy orchestrated by the World Bank.

In the 1980s, we set up Free Trade Zones and micro-chip assembling factories and invited the migration of predominantly young Malay girls, the Minah Karan to become the new indentured servants who were in mental servitute to the corporate greed of the local and international Info Tech manufacturing elite.

In the 1990s we designed a large scale real estate project, the MSC, and build the largest airport in Southeast Asia, so that the international corporate elites can easily land on our shores, make as much money as they can, and fly off to their paradise that are beyond the control of their own national governments.

Radical changes

We marvel at the power Artificial Intelligence has upon Human Reason and Aesthetic consciousness, albeit its historical development which can be traced back to the womb of the Pentagon. Excitedly, like a child given a new high-tech gadget, we institutionalise radical changes that transformed and continue to transform our lives through the MSC project. We invited the richest man in the world to advise us and to help make his corporation richer. We institutionalised this fantasy.

The computers at our desks, scientific calculators our kids in school play with - Pokemon, Giga Pets, MP3s, Playstation, GPS systems, the Internet - all these are among the spin-offs we get from the Pentagon. Recall that the computers we developed out of the Pentagon's need for Control Command Communication and Intelligence (C3I), and the Internet is developed out of DARPANET, a Defense Department project to link five computers so that they can be intelligent enough to guide missiles. But, we celebrate its ‘neutrality’.

We blindly adopt technology as the engine of growth and as agents of personal, social, and cognitive change, there is the strong tone of technological determinism and hypism which seem to be present and unanalysed. We call the leaders of our nation ‘captains of industry’.

We do not know how to explore the ideology of technological determinism. We simply let it colonise our thinking.

Technoloy is ideology

Jim Carrey, historian of technology, proposed that technology and ideology is one and one which goes beyond merely discourse. Technology shapes consciousness, directs human affairs, transform systems, displaces liberatory ideals, cancerise metaphysical space, rapes our will to become more cultural and communal, and places us on the pedestal of conspicuous consumption.

Virtual reality technologies locate us at the portal of virtual capitalism. Bio-technology is another phase in the march of technological fantasy - that the world will get better and better with these newer toys and games to play. The mutated genes gets into our agricultural environment possibly creating killer weeds, possibly carcinogenising the food we eat and possibly cancerising more and more cells with which we live.

When issues of technology, ideology, and fantasy - all these are taken together as critical analysis of what technology is there is a sense of hopelessness. Here is one example: Technology of arms production is techniques borne out of the quantification and systematisation of the human creativity gone berserk, devoid of moral conscience, let alone availed of a deep sense of reflectivity on the fate of generations ahead. How do ideas colonise us and how do our politicians continue to import and impose these ideas onto the people who are vulnerable to these social changes? The answer may lie in hegemony.

In between our natural self and the world we inhabit lies ‘spaces of knowledge and power, as Michel Foucault says. This space alienates human beings and create ‘habituses’ of people. We are moving into another phase of developmentalism: the Age of Bio-Tech Malaysia. But what is it all about and how do we test its long-term impact on society?

"Technological determinism"

American Historian David Nobel in America by Design wrote extensively on the role of these corporations and the kinds of research and development, which have characterised not only the way science developed but also how it has affected public policy.

David Nye's story of electrification of America is also a story of the Internet as it colonises public sphere and brings with it the ideology that “technology is neutral and devoid of human constitutive interests”. In essence, I propose that technological determinism is an ideology itself which masks the human actors, the corporations, and those involved in the production, reproduction, coding, signaling, symbolising - and mystifying the masses.

Only a radical critique of ideology, an Ideologiekritik as Jurgen Habermas says - a cognitive praxis which contains the analysing of knowledge claims vis-a-vis human constituted interest might be a starting point in looking at these claims; claims such as one made by Nicholas Negroponte or Digital Gurus who roam the earth in search of nations to digitise.

Are we imitating the Western mind? Are we becoming too logical, too rationalising, too relativising, and too scientistic to see the qualitative dimension of Nature from an eco-philosophical perspective? I suspect so - based on the educational system we have built for our nation and based on the nature of human capital revolution we have engineered with the help of outside colonisers. Or are we doomed to perpetually engineer and plan destruction so that the human ecosystem can continue to be infiltrated by genetically-modified crops that will mutate and carry consequences against what the natural world is designed to accommodate?

Technology is artifact. Artifacts have creators. Creators are people. And people have politics. Where will technological determinism as ideology be if we could name the shadows on the wall of the cave?

Let us gather our own homegrown intellectuals together with the leaders of our grassroots movement and enlightened and rakyat-friendly NGOs to debate on this issue, so that the new discourse on development will not be dominated by the members of the International Advisory Panel.

Let the rakyat speak. Let them speak, in their own language, of the meaning of appropriate technology and available resources that do not alienate them and create bigger spaces of knowledge and power between the have and the have-nots, between the powerful and the powerless.

We are fundamentally an organic nation - not a genetically-altered polity.

OUR USUAL REMINDER, FOLKS:
While the opinion in the article is mine,
the comments are yours;
present them rationally and ethically.
AND -- ABOLISH THE ISA -- NOW!

Comments (7)Add Comment
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written by taufan, July 30, 2009 14:06:52
I fell into this trap in getting my child to take up biotech in University after being led to believe that there's a bright future in this field.

Thank god my child entered a US/Malaysia Twinning University and she have completed the Course in the States.

Having been 'let down' by the government with no clear direction or result, I got my child to remain in the US and get a job there instead. My child was 'blessed' and got a job just two weeks after graduating. Will this be the same in Malaysia?

The future would be for my child to move on anywhere else except Malaysia. I just have no faith in this country!

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written by densemy, July 30, 2009 14:39:19
Biotechnology is another government delusion, an attempt to leapfrog over a history of neglect. They think they can pour money into a fantasy and drag Malaysia into the 21st century

Malaysian agriculture at the kampong level is running at less than 1% efficiency and at the plantation and 'intensive' agriculture level at a not much higher level of performance. Modern technology, concern for the environment, agricultural ethics have been totally abandoned in the race for greed

Is it any wonder that Malaysia cannot even feed itself

What Malaysia needs is not biotechnology but education, hard work and basic principles
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written by tkahyap, July 30, 2009 14:52:54
as a graduate student, i would like to share my outlook on biotech in malaysia.

I am now in Singapore as a graduate student, and compared to when I was in Universiti Teknologi Malaysia as an undergraduate, I could see the vast difference in standards. Malaysian biotechnology is at least 20, if not 30 years behind the US. We are still talking about enzyme kinetics, and plant active ingredient extraction while those in the US are talking about remodelling entire genomes, drug designs etc. While there are some small efforts like cancer research in CARIF, we are too small to make an impact, and our universities are staffed by imcompetent professors who publish very little. An average professor in US have more than 100 publications, the best have >500 publications (of course, impact factor is also important). The average Malaysian professor publish in South East Asian journals which are almost never read, or publish in "internal" publications.

Lets talk about job prospects. Go to Jobstreet and search for jobs in Biotechnology and what you will find are mostly medical sales jobs. Research jobs, if any, are far and few in between. The Biovalley is a dismal failure. Now they are talking about creating a biovalley in Danga Bay, plant research centre in Perlis, Biotech park in Pahang.

Really, who is coming?? What is our competitive advantage?
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written by tkahyap, July 30, 2009 15:06:26
I agree with the essence of Dr Azmi's piece, that Biotechnology holds an allure because it is "cutting edge" and "cool". I too was seduced by its promises when I just finished high school. Biotechnology promises a lot of things - cure for cancer, food to feed the world, green energy etc.

But missing in the equation is our own resources. Our country is too small, too backwards to make an impact. Even scholarship to overseas university for biology PhDs are given based on race. (Skim latihan akademik bumiputra, JPA scholarships etc) I believe biotechnology will continue to shine, because it holds the key to understand ourselves and our world. But that impact will be made by countries far more advanced than ours. Should we try to build our infrastructure, human resources to prepare for the biotech future? No! Currently nearly all public universities offer biotech courses. 95% of students will end up in jobs that are unrelated at all to biotech. And in the foreseable future as well. With the current mess our country is in, we are merely compounding the problem with our obsession with biotech.

You might ask how our country is supposed to become an advanced nation. I don't have an answer. But we need to start to retake the country from the goons who gave us this mess!
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written by chiongguo, July 30, 2009 20:49:01
tkahyap I think you had failed to understand the underlying thesis of Dr.Azly's post. It is almost "shocking" to note that you had only chose and picked "key words" and took that as the thrust of the article.

Applied Biotechnology IS BASED ON A FAILED PARADIGM. The history of science with all its glitters and limelight had actually brought much harm to humanity. Businesses maximise profit and it doesn't care who will pay for the cost. Eventually all of us pay a heavy cost in terms of our health.

Today we are eating better, eating more and yet we suffer more in increase chronic diseases. Most of these started after the first world war and accelerated after the second world war. Our increase lifespan is an illusion. Vast number of us living the last 10 or 20 year of our life suffer greatly. Just as an example that came to mind. For a long while farmers were told that only 3 elements will make your crop grow well. So we have NPK technology. By tweaking N,P and K a farmer is able to produce wonderful crop - for a shortwhile. Then they found that the crops were not very healthy and pesticides were introduced. No one thought of why vegetables grown organically have less invasion of pests. The law of nature is inviolate. When there is disease and death in the plant kingdom insects are invited and they come to help nature. Vegetables looking beautifully green is mainly because of the large use of nitrogen such as urea or ammonia but the plant is actually dying and is very unhealthy. Insects will not come to invade a healthy plant until such time nature is ready. There is a time-table.

Finding that such plants were unhealthy after a shortwhile we are now to believe that the plants needed micro-nutrients. So micro-nutrients were added into the equation. So farmers were told that about 15 were necessary. Dr.Lai found that the depletion of selenium in the soil in a village in southern china caused large number of stomach cancers. In fact these micro nutrients were found to have so much benefit for the body. Any lack in any of them will result in major problems down the road.

Hydroponic was based on NPK and later 15 elements were added. But our blood has about 90 odd elements and all of the vital to the health of a person. We can consume tonnes of vegetables that had little or no micro-nutrients than we are setting ourselves up for major health problem.

Interestingly sea water and sea salt - those raw unrefined sea-salt has over 80 elements and all of them vital to our health.

The above presentation is to compare how traditional diet with food from traditional sources is a proven paradigm of health and well-being. Science with all its glitz and glitter standing next to organic/biodynamic farming look ugly indeed.

I am not writing from ignorance. My background is in science and I have seen how science with its supposed age of enlightenment had befooled all of us. But businessmen and politicians don't really care.
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written by NSTPravda, July 31, 2009 07:39:15
Technology is artifact. Artifacts have creators. Creators are people. And people have politics. Where will technological determinism as ideology be if we could name the shadows on the wall of the cave?

Wah! This is indeed a high faluting discourse lah. If politics is the artoffart, the artoffart requires goodfarters... what's that gotta to with the price of roti canai on the walls of our public toilets?

These are the eternal questions that us coffee shop philosuffers ponder when we don't think about crime, police brutality, hog level government corruption, murders, and other necessities of bolih good life.

Semua-nya OK!
Dollar Akbar!
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written by Tlau, July 31, 2009 21:32:44
We have not even started with sustainable future and we jump start into biotech. That is the problem with our politicians. Professionals such as commenter chiongguo should be source for his good intelligence for this field. Projects as such should be given to the professionals and not politicians who are out only for personal agenda.
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