In
1983 a classified program was initiated in the US
intelligence community to
reverse the US declining economic and military competitiveness. The program, Project Socrates, used all source intelligence to review competitiveness
worldwide for all forms of competition to determine the source of the US
decline. What Project Socrates determined was that technology exploitation is
the foundation of all competitive advantage and that the source of the US declining competitiveness was
the fact that decision-making through the US both in the private and public
sectors had switched from decision making that was based on technology
exploitation (i.e., technology-based planning) to decision making that was
based on money exploitation (i.e., economic-based planning) at the end of World
War II.
Technology
is properly defined as any application of science to accomplish a function. The
science can be leading edge or well established and the function can have high
visibility or be significantly more mundane but it is all technology, and its
exploitation is the foundation of all competitive advantage.
Technology-based
planning is what was used to build the US industrial giants before WWII (e.g., Dow, DuPont, GM)
and it what was used to transform the US into a superpower.
It was not economic-based planning.
Project
Socrates determined that to rebuild US competitiveness, decision making throughout
the US had to readopt technology-based planning. Project Socrates also
determined that countries like China and India had continued executing
technology-based (while the US took its detour into economic-based) planning,
and as a result had considerable advanced the process and were using it to
build themselves into superpowers. To rebuild US competitiveness the US
decision-makers needed adopt a form of technology-based planning that was far
more advanced than that used by China and India.
Project
Socrates determined that technology-based planning makes an evolutionary leap
forward every few hundred years and the next evolutionary leap, the Automated
Innovation Revolution, was poised to occur. In the Automated Innovation
Revolution the process for determining how to acquire and utilize technology
for a competitive advantage (which includes R&D) is automated so that it
can be executed with unprecedented speed, efficiency and agility.
Project
Socrates developed the means for automated innovation so that the US could lead
the Automated Innovation Revolution in order to rebuild and maintain the
country's economic competitiveness for many generations.[51][52][53]
Other animal species
Adult gorilla
uses a branch as a walking stick to gauge the water's depth; an example of technology usage
by non-human primates.
The
use of basic technology is also a feature of other animal species apart from
humans. These include primates such as chimpanzees,
some dolphin
communities,[54][55]
and crows.[56][57]
Considering a more generic perspective of technology as ethology of active
environmental conditioning and control, we can also refer to animal examples
such as beavers and their dams, or bees and their honeycombs.
The
ability to make and use tools was once considered a defining characteristic of the
genus Homo.[58]
However, the discovery of tool construction among chimpanzees and related
primates has discarded the notion of the use of technology as unique to humans.
For example, researchers have observed wild chimpanzees utilising tools for
foraging: some of the tools used include leaf sponges, termite fishing probes, pestles and levers.[59]
West African chimpanzees also use stone hammers and anvils for cracking nuts,[60]
as do capuchin monkeys of Boa Vista, Brazil.[61]
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