Sebuah artikel yg menarik dan aktual dari The Jakarta Post , ditulis oleh alumni ITB yg sedang sekolah di amrik,semoga bermanfaat.
----------- Science and technology should be realigned in RI Sulfikar Amir, New York ( FSRD - '90 ) The 2004 legislative election ended successfully and peacefully. Soon, for the very first time, we are going to vote for the country's president. This is a no less daunting process since it undoubtedly involves power-sharing, which can be messy and unpredictable. One thing is clear, though. Economics-related minister's portfolios will be vigorously contested by the big players. For these seats provide accesses to the state's financial resources. I am not interested in discussing these lucrative seats. There is one seat that is certainly crucial, yet ignored by politicians for its lack of access to financial resources. I am talking about the state minister of research and technology, a seat deemed not lucrative and thus, usually left to the little players. During the New Order, the position of state minister of research and technology, as widely known, was glamorized by BJ Habibie's central role in technology policy. For over two decades, Habibie dominated the discourse of technology development and relentlessly advocated high technology for national development, making the state a major player in technology development. Habibie proposed a technological leapfrog by arguing that developing high technology would allow Indonesia to catch up with developed countries. This idea relies on the assumption that technology is an agent of social change. His close relationship with Soeharto enabled Habibie to nurture his pet project using the state's economic and political resources. >From one point of view, Habibie proved that Indonesian scientists and engineers had capabilities equal to those of industrialized countries. Through Habibie's programs, many talented students enjoyed the opportunity to study science and technology at prestigious universities abroad. With the success of the N250 flight test in 1995, Habibie asserted that Indonesians could stand as tall as people of developed nations. All of this is substantial progress for the country that we are supposed to be proud of. But pride is not enough. Despite aforementioned achievements, it is quite clear that Habibie's hi-tech vision worked technically but failed economically. Long before the crisis surged over the country, economists questioned Habibie's technology policies for their high cost and low contribution to the economy. Yet, the pragmatism of economists was in vain as Habibie's hi-tech programs were not derived from economic rationality. They were motivated more by an ideological stance than by financial calculations. Everybody would agree that technology is crucial to this country. But not all of us realize that our economic and social life today depends on imported technologies. Habibie left us with a technological infrastructure and a small but significant number of highly educated scientists and engineers. Hence, the issue the next cabinet will deal with is how to rearrange this valuable legacy, so as to make technology developments beneficial for society at large. The Office of the State Minister of Research and Technology, thus far, has attempted to make technology developments down-to-earth. A number of collaborative programs have been launched to achieve this goal. This should be appreciated. But in my opinion the problem is in the office itself. With the current structure of state administration, the office's technological programs are hardly relevant to the demands and conditions of other related sectors because its vision is oriented exclusively toward technology, not society. Hence, what I propose is to split the office's two roles, research (science) and technology, and implant them into different institutions. This would entail a slight but crucial change to the two existing ministries. First, the Ministry of Industry and Trade would become "Technology, Industry, and Trade". Second, the Ministry of National Education would become "Science, Education, and Culture". For years there was incoherence between economic and technological programs. The government recently launched an Act of National System of Science and Technology to solve this problem. However, the Act ignored that such incoherence resulted from a decades-long paradigm quarrel between the neoclassical economics of economic ministers and Schumpeterian approaches upheld by Habibie and his successors. While the former views technology as the by-product of the market mechanism, the latter sees technology as the source of economic growth. The strict application of these paradigms by competing groups, as such, results in economic policies that ignore technological innovations on the one hand, and technology policies that lack market considerations on the other. The only way to reconcile these paradigms would be to conflate their institutionalizations. For this, it would be more effective to combine technology with industry and trade. The goal of this integration would be two-fold. First, it would allow technologically minded people to directly interact with people of trade and industry, and vice versa. These interactions would shape integrated policies of technology, industry, and trade. Second, by integrating the technological sector with the industrial sector, the major player of technological development would be private, rather than state industries. By combining these three sectors in one institution, "the ministry of technology, industry, and trade" would reflect the industrialization process. The proposed ministry would require a leader with a good understanding of technology, industry, and trade. Moreover, the minister would need to be aware that technological innovation is not a cost, but a strategic investment in industry and the economy. One thing should be noted. Technology is never separate from science. Thus, it is timely to pay more serious attention to the development of science -- not solely for the satisfaction and prestige of scientists, but for the interests of society. The most competent institutions to conduct scientific research are universities. University is the place where knowledge is obtained through scientific research and distributed through education. This is the main reason why science and education should be combined in one ministry. If science and technology are separated in different ministries, how then, do they interact? The interaction of science and technology does not occur in state institutions. They interact through the process of the application of knowledge by university graduates in industry. This is a key point, whereby the major players of technological innovation are industries -- no longer the state. The last issue to point out is the urgency to bring culture back into the ministry of education. Integrating culture with tourism is a serious mistake. Culture is not about traditional rituals, dances, craft, etc. that can be sold as commodities. Culture is a process of interpretation through which humans understand the world. If science is the creation of the knowledge system and education is the distribution of that knowledge, then culture provides the frameworks upon which the knowledge system is based. This understanding would underpin the establishment of a ministry of science, education and culture. ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor ---------------------~--> Make a clean sweep of pop-up ads. Yahoo! Companion Toolbar. Now with Pop-Up Blocker. 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