Focuses were on Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico
1950's and 60's the need to establish research and development activities.
The absence of scientific capabilities was evident.
Reasons:
1. Lack of students in higher education.
2. The inexistence of postgraduate training.
3. Need to establish a minimum base for research and development activities.
PRESENT TECHNOLOGICAL AGENCIES
Reasons for Increases in Technology:
1. Relative abundance of qualified staff
2. Postgraduate level is established and growing
3. A widerange of research and development institutions—scientific and technological communities abundant
Problems
"Brain Drain"
1. Unemployment of scientists and engineers
2. High drop out rates among upper level students
3. Premature obsolescence and vulnerability of research and teaching
4. Research and development expenditures slowly growing compared to
**With 2.5% of world scientist, LA is responsible for 1.8% of world's research and
development expenditure in 1980.
*Experts suspect that technological advances in LA will become increasingly out of step with social and material needs of population. Research and development capability of LA's accomplishments will unessential if not trivial.
OTHER PROBLEMS
*LA research and development systems have not kept pace with international developments.
*Although research capabilities have been meet they are isolated events, these researching institutions hold low weight and are obsolete.
*LA's universities are politicized and controlled by self-serving interest groups.
*A need for aims and directions of regional scientific development must be rethought, new international challenges, new economic demands, persistent productive heterogeneity, and acute financial scarcity.
1940-1970 THE RESEARCH AGENDA FOR MODERNIZATION
*Most technology that was transferred to LA was embodied in equipment and procedures.
Selection, negotiation, acquisition, and assimilation of disembodied technology were ignored.
*Domestic technology became more expensive, therefore explaining the late development in the area of capital goods, the late start of postgraduate education, the marginal structure of experimental research and development, and the levels of entrepreneurial participation. All of these factors have shaped the LA's current industrial situation.
*The national elites conveyed to the academic-scientific community of LA governments a view that there was a one-way, linear flow of ideas from research groups to commercial or operational application.
*This theory was unable to reinforce local technology, the technology remained elementary and continued to complement imported technology.
REGIONAL R&D
-The regions research capabilities.
Argentina and atomic energy
*Argentina was the earliest LA country to develop a scientific and technological
base (1950).
*The main areas of involvement were agroindustry, textiles, building materials, and
some final chemical and electrical products.
*The local industry created an appropriate resource base and high levels of income
equaling experience in both economic management and most important the
establishment of an adequate scientific and technological infrastructure.
*By the 1950's industries were creating intermediate goods, such as chemicals and
petrochemicals, as a result the construction of the Atucha Nuclear Power Station
(ANPS) was developed.
*ANPS was the first case in Argentina and LA of a complex "high technology"
project.
Brazilian computer case
*A lacking of an educated population. Only 11% of Brazilian 20-24 year olds
were enrolled in higher education, currently it is less than 10%. In 1985 22.3% of
Brazil's pop. was illiterate.
*Today Brazil has the largest research community with 53,000 researchers.
*A group of Brazilian physicists established a domestic microcomputer industry.
*This microcomputer industry was a 3rd world success story in high
tech development.
*The purpose for this was to enforce an academic effort to create a critical
mass of researchers in computer science.
* In 1974 a public firm COBRA (Computadores e Sistemas Basileiros) was created.
*COBRA develops and produces small dataprocessor systems.
*The emergence of COBRA and other local industries provoked
an intense demand for qualified research and development personnel.
NATIONAL SYSTEM OF RESEARCHERS (SNI)
*Mexico created this new program SNI in order to reduce brain drain of the
elite in the sciences and technology systems.
*SNI had 3 main objectives:
1. to protect the core of Mexico's researchers
2. to promote their improvement and productivity
3. to foster the participation and self-evaluation of the research
community.
*The main objectives were again to avoid brain drain and to ensure the
researchers full time commitment to research activities.
RESEARCH AND SCIENTIFIC AREAS OF APPLICATION
*In the areas of SNI and COBRA, they contained levels and national autonomy
and however valuable the scientific and technical specialist communities,
they were built around very specific fields of interest. These efforts remained
isolated.
*Challenges included a need for research and development to become more
economically, socially, and culturally meaningful.
Agriculture
The establishment of R&D institutions in the mid-1950's and early 1960's were
established.
National Institute of Farming Technology (INTA), Argentina
National Institute of Agricultural Research (INIAP), Ecuador
National Agricultural and Livestock Research Fund (FONAIAP), Venezuela
National Institute of Agricultural Research (INIA), Mexico
National Institute of Agricultural Research (INIA), Chile
**their mission involved improving the diffusion of technology available industrialized countries.
**Overall the resulting technology has been capital intensive and has centered on products of temperate climates. Examples include products such as corn, milk, beef, and rice.
Some major problems LA countries face include:
1. Qualitative nature of the prevailing agrarian modernization processes.
2. Emergence of more complex institutional model for technology
generation made of different kinds of organizations.
3. The growing internationalization of technology supplies.
Mineral resources
*Mineral resources have always been abundant in LA, only a lack of engineers has been scarce rectifying higher education.
*Firms in the mineral industry created a demand for engineering services, also a demand for engineers were in need.
*The first four geology schools were founded in Brazil as recently as 1957.
*In Chile the state created the Instituto de Investigaciones Geologicas in 1957, its purpose is to develop students in the earth sciences.
THE LATIN AMERICAN UNIVERISTY...
*A strong demand from science and engineering graduates able to handle operational and service problems of the new assembly industry.
*An unprecedented expansion in education from 1950 to 1980, an increase from about 250,000 students in 1950 to 5,380,000 in 1980.
*In the earlier activities of Argentina's atomic energy industry and Brazil's computer industry are but two examples of common ideological commitment.
*Others include: IVIC-Instituto Venzolano de Invetigacion Cientifica, which was dedicated to petrochesists; Institute of Oil Technology (INTEVEP); ITA or Instituto de Technologia Aeronautica.
*More problems....
**Potentially interesting results were unpublicized or there was no way of transforming these creations into products.
**It was a politicized academic environment with feuding self-serving interest groups.
**A much more demanding workload for students became evident.
**A lose of research attractiveness to universities.
MOTIVATION FOR IDEAS???
"Frustration"
*The region has become exhausted materially and morally
*A need to find an alternative road to development and the acceptance of a totally subordinate role in the world division labor.
*A sociological change needs to transpire…
Problems in LA are:
5. Unessential research
As a result of the many unexpected discoveries resulting from local capabilities in science, technology, industry, management, and labor skills the arising of technical and managerial skills gave a better understanding of public relations.
