Please join us for a special talk, by STS Professor Emeritus Loren Graham:
"Russia's Dilemma: Natural Resource State or High-Tech Player?" Monday, Oct. 18, 4 - 5:30 pm Room E51-275 Russia has a very unusual pattern in its effort to modernize technologically. For three hundred years, since the time of Peter the Great, it has made repeated attempts to catch up in modern technology, and it has achieved many momentary successes - in railroads, in armaments, in atomic energy, in space flights, in aviation, and in many other fields - but it has fallen back behind again after these achievements. Today it is largely dependent on extractive industries (especially oil and gas) for its economic prosperity, not high technology. At the present time it is making another major effort to catch up - especially in nanotechnology and in the construction of a "Russian Silicon Valley" in Skolkovo. I have made four trips to Russia in the last five months examining these efforts, and in my talk I will describe them and give some opinions about their probability of success or lack of it. For a little info on Prof. Graham: http://web.mit.edu/sts/people/graham.html
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