Santa Clara University

The Lecture

Technology is a major component of human progress. However, technology is also a social construction and specific technologies follow specific demands from different social, economic, and political interests. For instance, only as global warming became a widespread concern did an interest and a market in creating green energy technologies arise. Furthermore, given the business and government environments in which technological innovation operates, more often than not, large segments of human kind are excluded from the benefits of research and technological innovation. Poignant examples of such mismatch between human demand and technology supply are the lack of an effective malaria vaccine, or the limited use of technology to provide clean water in much of the world. I argue that a much more proactive technology policy is necessary to broaden the scope and the benefits of our current technological revolution. Furthermore, because in the decisive realm of information and communication technologies the users are also producers of technology, as the history of the Internet and mobile communications shows, expanding the use of appropriate technologies deepens the source of potential innovation. In developing this argument I rely on the international experience of the last two decades in the interplay between technology and society, and I place it in the context of the ongoing global economic recession.

The Lecturer

Manuel Castells is the Wallis Annenberg Chair of Communication Technology and Society at the University of Southern California. He is a Distinguished Visiting Professor of the Center for Science, Technology and Society at Santa Clara University. Furthermore, he is a Member of the Governing Board of the European Institute of Innovation and Technology of the European Union (EIT).