Preface by Theodore Gordon
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Chapter 1: What is Technology?
Chapter 2: Historical Antecedents of Soft Technology
Chapter 3: Soft Technology and Technological Competitiveness
Chapter 4: Soft Technology and Innovation
Chapter 5: Soft Industries
Chapter 6: Soft Technology and the Fourth Generation of Technology Foresight
Postscript: The Principles for Development in the Twenty-first Century – Harmony, Balance, and Coexistence
Zhouying Jin is a senior researcher and professor, Institute of Quanti-Economics & Techno-Economics of Chinese Academy of Social Sciences; Director, Center for Technology Innovation and Strategy Studies (CTISS) of Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. She also is president and founder for the Beijing Academy of Soft Technology.
'Professor Jin’s book, Global Technological Change: From Hard
Technology to Soft Technology, is a powerful reconceptualization of
technological options and innovation management, which can help
steer societies in assessing technologies for the 21st century. As
Zhouying Jin correctly points out: in emerging knowledge societies,
the ''soft'' technologies are drivers of physical ''hardware''
technologies. These soft technologies include management,
organizational design, education for creativity and
entrepreneurship, good governance, prudent regulation, patent
systems, efficient banking as well as fostering systems thinking,
ecological and cultural balance. This book is a major intellectual
advance that can help clarify human choices for decades to
come.'
*Hazel Henderson, MD, CalvertHenderson Quality of Life
Indicators*
This volume indicates that the complex problems we are facing in
the 21st century can only be solved by a balance between ‘yin-yang’
environment, between the hard technology (machine-centred) and the
soft technology (human-centred). This concept is invaluable as it
conveys a new perspective of the assumptions about the
relationships between technological innovation, institutional
innovation, as well as of the gap between the developed and
developing countries at the turn of the new millennium.
*Karamjit S Gill, Editor, AI& Society: Journal of Human-Centred
Systems*
This book is the most thoroughly comprehensive look at technology
from a Western and Chinese perspective that I have ever had the
privilege to read. The sweep of Prof. Jin’s examination is matched
by the breadth of her scholarship. Her development of 'Soft
Technology' as a concept which can bridge the divide between our
planetary science and our cultural consciousness is a unique
contribution to our understanding of the place where science meets
awareness. Her work deserves to be studied in careful detail for
the insight it might provide us, particularly in the West, of how
to appropriately empower Eastern cultures to be fully equal global
partners with the Western Industrial communities based upon
Harmony, Balance and Equality.
*Rinaldo S. Brutoc, President, World Business Academy*
This is an exciting book. Having spent some part of the past year
in East Asia engaged in Technology Policy projects, it is clear
that the Twentieth Century pattern of seeing China and the other
'Five Tigers' playing 'catch-up' with the West is now passe. Now
the West will be hard pressed to keep up with China and the others,
and it is highly useful to have a study which clearly presents a
Chinese view of this dynamic dance of technologies... All in all,
this is a fascinating and innovative look at the future of one of
the world's largest economies.
*Tim Mack, President (CEO) of the WFS*
 |
Ask a Question About this Product More... |
|
