The Globalization of Materials Research
- PDF / 50,435 Bytes
- 1 Pages / 612 x 792 pts (letter) Page_size
- 21 Downloads / 190 Views
Letter from the President
The Globalization of Materials Research Globalization is a hot-button topic in the United States. There is widespread concern, even alarm, at the rapid trend toward white-collar jobs moving from the United States to lower-cost locations, especially India and, above all, China. This issue has moved onto the radar screen of scientists, as it has come to involve the research activity. Large corporations are now outsourcing and “offshoring” not only manufacturing and tech-support centers, but research and development (R&D) centers as well. This development is the subject of intense debate throughout the science and technology community. The U.S. scientific community in particular is immensely concerned about a movement that seems to threaten the traditional U.S. dominance in certain fields of R&D, particularly in several technology areas linked to the physical sciences. Combating this trend of globalization is now an unstated goal of many recent legislative actions in the United States. As a society with global roots and a strong international membership, I believe the Materials Research Society should embrace the trend. We will then be positioned to move our community into a globalized future. The crossover of an essentially Luddite attitude into the high-tech community is interesting to watch. Fear of globalization was once the province of the more technophobic low-tech industries. Since the 1930s, trade unions in almost all developed countries have vehemently opposed the “movement of jobs overseas” in the same way that Luddites opposed “machines taking jobs away from people” in the 19th century. The recent migration of garment manufacturing and other labor-intensive industries to the emerging economies has been met with fear, loathing, and protectionist import controls. But the technology community in general has spoken out for free trade and the open transfer of human knowledge. The globalization of the steel and silicon industries was perhaps closer to home for us in MRS, but until recently it affected mainly manufacturing activities, and we looked on with equanimity. Now, however, we are seeing global outsourcing of the most knowledge-based components of our economy, including not only the most high-tech segments of our manufacturing economy, but also basic R&D. This has generated debate at the highest levels of scientific society on how to prevent the movement of “our” “competitive advantage” “overseas.” The renewed popularity of rules that control technology exports or, worse, the “Deemed Export” of technology (by communication of know-how to an MRS BULLETIN • VOLUME 30 • OCTOBER 2005
“[A]ll countries will successfully carve out their own niche in an open, free, vibrant, and truly global materials research community.”
“alien”) is a direct consequence. The point of a joke, like the point of a compass, tends to disappear when it is pointing at you. Looked at with hindsight, the fear that globalization of garment manufacturing would impoverish the Western economies was irrational. And
Data Loading...
