Re: High Tech/New Tech

[Bill Garmer <bgarmer@tsc.net>]

At 11:23 AM 9/5/97 EDT, Joseph P. Benedetto wrote:
<stuff deleted about Japan becoming modernized>
>I am not so sure.  The medieval Japanese achieved modernization as a 20th
>Century power in one man's lifetime, yes, but at the cost of "selling
>out" to the foreign powers, buying what Japanese needed to modernize
>directly form the modern powers, including the knowledge in the form of
>living, breathing *gaijin* who came to Japan and taught the backwards

I never read about breathing the "gaijin" :)  But the Nihonjin used trade
to gather the buy what they did not have, technology.  Dispite their
strides they still have a difficult time developing technology.  They have
had only 4 Nobel Prizes since the war.  Most of the technology they
produced is developed outside Nihon to this day.

>Japanese how the West did things.  They did NOT decide to suddenly pick
>up and develop as a modern, industrialized nation--they borrowed heavily
>on the existing infrastructure and knowledge of foreigners.

Extremely true - several motovations in that.  First they saw what the
English were doing to China and did not want that to happen to them.  They
played the US and UK trade interests off each other to make sure that they
did not have the same thing happen to them.  Second, they still had the
desire for empire and realized that they wouldn't get it with swords vs
rifles.

>As to the third world countries picking themselves up by their bootstraps
>and returning to a barely-industrialized status, maybe--maybe not.  How
>dependant are they on outside aid?  Food deliveries?  Medical and
>technical assistance?  On importing raw materials?  While it is possible
>Peru will come out all right, it is also possible that Peru will suffer
>internal civil war and in 20 years of fighting be reduced to a level not
>much better than the Spanish and the Incas of the 1500's.
>
>Joe
>angevin@juno.com
>
Bill