Building a workable s & t infrastructure in Malaysia

Abstract

For many industrialising countries like Malaysia, the issues of technological development are beginning to assume an important dimension. These countries are attempting to industrialise without the benefits of the long more or less evolutionary evolutionary process of technological change characteristics of matured industrial nations. The industrial world has had 3 centuries of experience in S&T following the 17th Century scientific evolution and the 18th Century industrial evolution. For Malaysia, the process of industrialisation depends critically on the process of acquiring technological competencies. The process of national industrial development can be identified with the process by which the Nation keeps on accumulating technological capabilities. The direction and speed of such development are influenced by the direction and speed of a nation's endeavour to develop its S&T capabilities. Unless there is a concurrent development of strong S&T capabilities, the country runs the risk of being in a permanents stage of dependence without acquiring its own know-how and skill of managing its industrial development.