Santa Clara University

Developing Technology to Benefit Humanity

Santa Clara University's Center for Science, Technology, and Society (CSTS) plays a pivotal role in The Tech Museum of Innovation's annual Tech Awards. Under the leadership of CSTS Director James Koch, the center coordinates the judging process that culminates in prizes in five categories under the umbrella title "Technology Benefiting Humanity." The center assembles panels of judges chaired by SCU faculty and including senior executives from multinational corporations, scholars from SCU and other research institutions and representatives from the public sector.

As Koch explains, nominations and applications are evaluated according to criteria that focus on improving the human condition through economic development, education, environment, equality, or health.

In 2002, the 25 finalists included The Center for Spoken Language Research at the University of Colorado, where three-dimensional computer characters demonstrate precise verbal language skills on screen to help people suffering from deafness, autism, and other disorders learn to speak. Another entry, a team of scientists from the Malaysian Palm Oil Board, developed a method of extracting beneficial antioxidant compounds from environmentally hazardous waste created during palm oil processing.

Among the five 2002 winners selected by the CSTS-led panels and honored at the November event presented by Applied Materials Inc. was ApproTec, a firm that develops and markets micro-irrigation technologies to provide small farmers in Africa and other developing areas easier access to water for crop irrigation. Another winner, Andreas Plückthun, a biochemist who heads the Biochemisches Institut at the Universität Zürich in Switzerland, was honored for his laboratory's development of recombinant antibodies to aid in the treatment of disease.

Helping identify global leaders in the development of technologies that benefit humanity is just one of many ways that the center carries out its distinctive mission to promote the common good and a more humane and just world in an increasingly technological society. The center is interdisciplinary, involving Santa Clara faculty from law and computer engineering to biology, economics, the humanities, and business. Its research partnerships, conference speakers, and visiting scholars come from many different disciplines and nations.

Koch's own research and engagement in public dialogue has taken him around the world. At a conference last May in Rome titled "The Glocal Forum," Koch joined local level leaders from many countries in a discussion of global issues as seen from local perspectives. In his remarks, Koch noted that access to the Internet is not, in itself, going to bring greater opportunity for everyone.

"The changes that are reshaping our information economy are 'sociotechnical' system changes," Koch told the audience. "These changes are not about technology; they are about creating new capabilities, new social and organizational systems, and new possibilities based on the power of information." Technology in society, he pointed out, is not merely about hardware, software, and bandwidth. For new opportunities to become widespread, change initiatives must simultaneously attend to connectivity and infrastructure, as well as education, locally relevant content, and enterprise incentives. Empowerment will come when everyone in the global society can create-not just consume-technology.