SV: Did you hear this?

[Rohit Chopra]

Bhadraiah,

I agree that there is nothing wrong for migrants to pass on technology to
India. But your logic for Indian colonization seems rather simplistic. Mere
technological superiority, in itself, does not lead to colonialism. What
about intra-Asian colonialism?

Also what do you mean by 'materialistic' and, by implication, 'non
materialistic' technology? Is not all technology - grounded in material
indexes. My interest in this comes from my work which deals with how
technology impacts the logic of social relations. It seems to me that in the
case of a technocratic community of Indians, it leads to applying a
technological paradigm to understanding culture, where everything can be
seen according to the principles of modular logic - culture and technology
are independent spheres, the globe is a level playing field etc, everything
can be solved according to a well-defined action plan with specified and
agreed upon standards etc, everything must be governed by doctrine ie codes
and protocols (such as IPR). This is a reductive description (since I do not
want to inflict long passages about the topic, on readers on this forum),
though the essence of my view.

By the way, would you agree that the class of Indians who leave for the US
and make big bucks working in technology are a modern day equivalent of a
so-called 'westernized elite'. If after independence, the English language
guaranteed social mobility and elitism, would you not say that technology is
the mantra of elitism and social mobility today? It does not matter that
those who benefit directly from it may espouse Hindutva views, are they not
still elitist?

I stray from the topic, so I'll end here.

Rohit



>Bhadraiah Mallampalli [SMTP:vaidix at HOTMAIL.COM] skrev 30. januar 2001
>19:37:India became colonized precisely because its "materialistic"
>technology got outdated. So there is nothing wrong if engineers leave India
>to US to acquire the technology. As long as intellectual property rights
>are not violated, there is nothing wrong for these migrants to pass on
>technology to India via joint ventures etc, as is happening now at Silicon
>Valley.


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