Sunday | April 28, 1996
Last week I attempted to show that even a cursory view of the history of innovation and technology development teaches us caution
in developing policies that reward and punish different sectors of the economy based on today’s technologies and knowledge. Indeed it even suggests it may be unwise to back one strand of development as against another — case in point — VHS versus Betamax standard for video recorders. Betamax is still used in high level applications in studios, whereas home recorders go VHS — a result of commercial alliances and, one may argue, Sony’s errors. In the field of personal computers, many admit that the Apple standard provides an elegant and technically superior solution. This did not stop the Microsoft juggernaught that has the overwhelming share of the market. The simple fact is that in general, new inventions do not allow easy prediction of the uses to which they will ultimately be put. They also do not indicate how markets and demand will behave towards implementation of an innovation as a technology. Furthermore there is no fail safe way to predict the commercial alliances that can and often do entrench a standard or particular application of a technology. High definition TV is a case in point of the latter.
I also wanted to “look at the way in which technology interacts with production and people in any society”, put differently, to argue that demographic and societal change play an important part in the development and popular use of a technology. Two types of development should suffice to make the point. The first is labour saving devices. A fairly well developed area in economics is that of Choice of Techniques. In the decision to produce a commodity, a firm usually has more than one method at its disposal. Sugar cane for instance can be harvested by labour or machines. Processes may be automated or manual. Often more than one process can achieve the same end result in terms of a product.
Different techniques or processes have different costs. Costs reflect the resource endowment of the society. One may be capital rich and labour poor. Thus in Australia sugar cane is harvested mechanically whereas in Jamaica no firm could readily raise the issue of mechanization in sugar if it wanted to survive. It is no surprise that most of the labour saving devices for the home were first developed in the USA. It is cheaper to use a washing machine in America than employ a maid. This is different for Jamaica.
Women cutting and stacking cane © The Gleaner
Here is a paradox. We have a serious unemployment problem yet all of the creature comforts available in the USA are here. This is the result of societal differentiation. There are people in Jamaica who can afford these devices. But a more interesting development is that of fast food chains. It is easy to see why these institutions developed in America. Both demographic and societal change interacted with technological development to create this phenomenon. When women left the home and began work commercially, when distances became long yet short, the need for a fast, efficient and stable way to provide food created McDonald’s etc. McDonald’s created the technology to deliver food fast and consistently. The hamburger is no longer turned on the grill! It is cooked both sides at once, at a precise temperature for a precise period of time in all of their establishments, with the identical food processing and cooking equipment.
Jamaican entrepreneurship: thriving less than 300 metres from Kentucky Fried Chicken! © Wilberne Persaud
When McDonald’s comes to Jamaica or goes to England none of this is supposed to change. Minor adjustments may be made for differences in national taste patterns — but the lettuce must be standardized. McDonald’s would rather source five thousand heads of lettuce per day from one hydroponics growing firm than Jamaica’s hundreds of small farmers! We see an implication here — internationalization of a particular technology. McDonald’s has a strongly funded institution which researches and develops food, methods of preparation, investigates tastes, etc.
But stop a while. We still find in Europe a proliferation of restaurants run and managed in the traditional way. In fact some people deplore the intrusion which the philistine food-dunking of the USA represents in Europe. This is the cultural and societal difference. Food in France provides a meeting ground for people to relax and converse in their regular and normal day to day existence. In the USA this is more of a special occasion — the business lunch, the evening out, etc. Mind you, some argue this is part of the reason for the USA’s higher productivity — understandably, the finer things of life do come at a cost!
Take another interesting phenomenon. Kingston’s Wharves is teeming with people, mostly men, on the outside who sit around waiting to pounce on the individual who comes to clear his car, barrel etc. They want ‘a money’; they claim to know someone inside who can ‘fix things’. Surely these men could be doing good service as stevedores manhandling cargo as they did of old. No! They cannot be so employed because containerization is now a worldwide method. This has nothing to do with Jamaica’s resource endowment. Whether we had 25 or 30 per cent unemployment and whether the men were willing and able to do this kind of work is irrelevant. If Jamaica wishes to be in the transshipment business there is no choice. Resource endowment in the developed countries and efficiency considerations make it imperative that we use Gantry Cranes and the paraphernalia which the business demands. Furthermore once we recognise the global village of communication, no one would contemplate the old time stevedore’s job!
Consider all of the above. Can we really justify the way in which we treat research and development? The sugar cane is a raw material; it does not necessarily have to be used to produce sugar! Lecky developed the Jamaica Hope and if I understand it correctly, today records are not being kept. The Jamaica Kennel Club may indeed have a better database of its members’ purebred stock than those responsible for our Jamaica Hope. What a condition for us to be in! The Agricultural Station at Bodles, where just last week we learn of a new variety of banana being developed, is in a sorry state. I have said all of this to make what I believe to be a simple and self-evident point. We can develop technologies that are of use to us. But we do so at a cost. We must be prepared as a society, to take the longer view. Our institutions and business concerns must begin to pay a bit more regard to knowledge generation and product development. Our industrial policy must consider ways in which it might stimulate such activity. Chasing paper offered by government will lead to bankruptcy. I am afraid I do not have the answers, would never pretend to. But there are some, perhaps vague, directions in which we might usefully and profitably move. Is it irresponsible to believe that if we can produce the music and sportsmen and women that we do, that we can and ought to mirror this in our economy?
