Sat - December 11, 2004

Institute for Global Technology Education


Polytechnic University is creating an Institute for Global Technology Education. This Institute will be a consortium of universities and other institutions involved in global technology education and transfer. For reasons that will be explored in this Weblog the Institute will focus on triangular relations with Europe, the United States and China. The role of technology in contemporary Chinese life and the implications of this for the West will be central to these reflections.

At first technology in China seems to be regarded in the same way as it is in the United States. I do not believe this is the case and will attempt to clarify this view. To do so will require a series of entries. To begin I will offer a thesis about the global nature of technology.

The case to be made here is focused in this manner. First, it is clear that engineering education did not always need to be global and indeed engineering skill and accomplishment could, in the not so distant past, be viewed as a national treasure to be guarded and protected carefully. Engineering expertise was proprietary knowledge, so to speak, and not to be shared with competitors. I contend that this view is no longer tenable. Second, I am not going to speak about what I take to be the obvious good associated with engineers having broad cultural knowledge of the sort enhanced by humanities education. Rather I want to argue that engineering itself, the hard technology and not the social institutions that support it, at this point in the evolution of knowledge, is inherently global. I will argue this despite the local origins of innovative solutions to problems.

Some preliminary distinctions need to be made. Consider the following terms: information, data, fact, technique, understanding and knowledge. Science strictly speaking means knowledge. Engineers use all of these terms, sometimes interchangeably. For our purpose let us group information, data and fact together on one side and understanding and knowledge together on the other. Technique can stand in between. We should further distinguish technique from technology and engineering. Technique refers particularly to the art or process of an action, often the specific motion required. Engineering is the application of technique to a task or problem. One engineers a bridge across a river employing techniques of welding, riveting, etc. Technology synthesizes technique and reason (logos) and addresses reality in a way that simultaneously interprets and modifies.

Engineering is an activity that, like invention, can be performed solo. Although the knowledge and skill-base required to carry out large scale and highly complex projects mitigates against solo performance it is still possible for such work to be done completely locally. In fact, the local character of engineering is an aspect that must not be overlooked. The problems engineers face are very largely determined by local factors such as geography, climate, society, economy, politics and so on. Engineering solutions that do not account adequately for local determinants are rarely satisfactory. The reason why all bridges in the world are not the same, despite being based upon universal physical laws and mathematical principles, is the necessity to accommodate these local determinants. The question is this: If engineering consists in the application of universal physical laws and mathematical principles (knowledge or science) to local circumstances, why need engineers care about how things are done elsewhere? There are various answers but I will mention only three.

1 .Standardization of parts and materials.
2. Skills of workers must travel.
3. Innovation.

For economic reasons, unless a community has unlimited wealth and no need or desire to connect infrastructure to the outside world, the first two points already imply the necessary extension of engineering practice beyond localities. However it is the third point I want to address, especially in the light of globalization.

If necessity is the mother of invention then competition and the sheer drive to be original are the parents of innovation. In this case we have a three-tier hierarchy with engineering occupying the bottom rung. Engineering is problem solving and a good solution may well stand the test of time. Invention creates something new, out of necessity, due to the inadequacy or absence of existing engineering solutions. Innovation results from the almost theological drive to create and perfect. Innovation incorporates invention just as invention absorbs engineering. Innovation, supported by modern technology, possesses world-changing power and thus perpetuates the need for further engineering, invention and innovation. At this point we live in an age of innovation meaning that change is permanent and the goal of perfection continually recedes. Exacerbated by ecological dynamics the cycle of innovation continues to accelerate.

Innovation tends to change the way tasks are carried out, pushing older processes into obsolescence. Older processes may be preferred for aesthetic reasons and in some cases may even be superior to the innovations that succeed them, but they are nevertheless rendered obsolescent. An example is the replacement by digital audio of the analogue phonograph recording and the electronic tube amplifier. For reasons such as these innovation has become an imperative. The rapidity of communication and the ease, reliability and speed of transportation have left no corner of the globe untouched by the forces of obsolescence brought on by innovative activity.

Yet forced obsolescence and the imperative of innovation are not the only tendencies making engineering necessarily global. It is also compelled by the revolution in technology that is not only changing the face of the world but its soul as well. The Internet will serve both as an example and metaphor for the larger situation. The processes of modern technology are such that every new technique stands as critique of not only the replaced technique but of all other technique. Technology is the rationalization of technique through dialogical exchange. A new technique calls for the assessment of itself according to the standards it is meant to attain and in comparison to the attained results of other techniques. The yardstick of comparison measures relative efficiency. The review of technique and all technical processes in this rationalized environment weaves an implicit web of techniques. We can thus imagine technology as a web of techniques, each particular technique defining its own topos, i.e., its own position, attitude, duration and dimension and each in relation, sometimes direct but more often mediated, to other technique-nodes. The activation of any technique resonates throughout the web. The extent to which techniques improve the strength and integrity of the entire web predicts the success and longevity of each particular technique. It is easy to understand how the Internet is both example par excellence of technology and a metaphor for the abstract interactions of the discursive network of technology itself. Given the immediacy of electronic communications the web of technology is no longer limited by space or time and persists as an enduring feature of the world. All engineering activity takes place within this web and is tested by it.
[The full text from which the the above comments are excerpted is part of a presentation to the UCIEE in February, 2005, at their eighth annual congress in Kingston, Jamaica. It may be read in its entirety at HaroldSjursen.org .]

In this way engineering is an interdependent, global enterprise. When we consider engineering in a national context, such as that of China, the first and usual consideration is how it benefits the economy. However, when one puts engineering into the context of technology then fundamental cultural and civilizational issues must be considered.

Such issues in the Chinese context will be addressed in the next entry.

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Fri - December 26, 2003

The Meaning to China of Exchange and some Pictures


In light of our departure in a few days to China and prompted by the natural gas well disaster near Chongqing I am reminded that the most obvious sense of exchange these days is of money.

Here are some my photos from a trip to Beijing and Shanghai taken two years ago in January on a trip to plan another educational exchange. The scenes are mostly from the Forbidden City, on the campus of the North China University of Technology (including me with officials from the school) and street scenes and contemporary architecture in Shanghai.

While pondering how to deal with currency in China where non-Chinese credit cards are rare and money exchange is very difficult I read of the explosion of the gas well not that far from where we will be in Sichuan province in Chengdu. The following paragraph in the New York Times account of the incident struck me:

"The oil industry is under great pressure to discover new sources of energy as quickly as possible to alleviate the country's rapidly growing dependence on foreign engery and mineral resources, which has led to surges in prices and supply shortages. Until the mid-1990's, China was largely energy independent, but it is quickly challenging Japan and the United States as the world's largest importers of oil, prompting efforts to secure new supplies domestically and by building pipelines into Russia and Central Asia."
"Energy is a serious bottleneck for China's economy, which is growing at better than an 8 percent pace this year. Long accustomed to protecting its own market from outside oil an gas companies, China has been rebuffed recently by major oil companies and neighboring conutries as its seeks to play a direct role in developing oil and gas fields in the region. That has prompted leaders to put even more emphasis on exploiting its own supplies of natural gas in places like southwestern Sichuan province where the accident occurred."

How long will it be before the conflicts over oil that beset the United States afflict China? And given the political tensions likely to emerge and given the environmental consequences of fossil fuel consumption will this exchange advance or degrade Chinese culture?

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Mon - December 22, 2003

Is technology culture specific?


The relation between culture as philosophy (definition from previous entry) and civilization as a politically, historically, economically and generally geographically bound expression of culture leaves open the question of the status of technology. Techne or practice emerges within the horizon of a civilization usually as a means to solve a practical problem. Different needs, environmental conditions, materials available, etc., all contribute to the determination of the specific techne. Tools, techniques, work strategies can be transfered or exchanged between and among civilizations.

It is possible of course that some techniques or practices can offend cultural values as the Persian practice of eating their dead offended the Greek cultural sense of the meaning and dignity of death. It was not only or even that that the Persian practice was deemed inapplicable or inferior to the Greek practice of burning their dead; it was deeply offensive to philosophically based cultural norms.

So technology transfer is no simpler that cultural exchange. Indeed I have thought that technology has the power to undermine culture when the forces compelling transfer are as powerful as they are in age of globalization. (See my "Globalization and the New Challenges for Ethics .")

Historically China attempted to resist technology transfer. They did not want outward technology transfer simply because they did not want to loose the value of knowing how, e.g., to make something as desirable as porcelain. More interestingly they did not want technology transfer inward because they feared it would undermine the essence of being Chinese. This strikes many as a peculiar notion, but I tend to accept it both in its specific Chinese context and also as a general principle.

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Sun - December 21, 2003

Triangulation of cultures: civilizations, philosophies, personal identies


For some time I have thought that philosophy, the sort I am most interested in at least, manifests the conjunction of metaphysics (in the Aristotelian sense of first principles), political theory and religious phenomenology. A philosophy thus understood and well articulated is the most penetrating expression of culture. It is in this sense that we speak about Greek philosophy or Chinese philosophy. Of course on this reading philosophy in the west derives largely from Greek philosophy.

Culture and civilization are far from synonymous terms but they are sometimes used interchangeably in a manner that works serious confusion. If we allow as suggested above that philosophy is the expression par excellence of culture then we can use the term civilization to refer to the continuity of practices for a self-defined people. Civilizations unlike cultures are historically determined and tend to have geographic and economic elements. Civilizations are productive of variant norms of cultural ideals which explains nationalistic music and art, for example. In some cases a civilization and a culture are coextensive as may be said of China. But if western philosophy is derivative of Greek philosophy then whereas we can speak of Scandinavian civilization we should not strictly speaking call it culture. It is one of the European variants of Greek culture/philosophy.

Personal identity emerges from the influences of life experience, the normalizing effect of civilizational practices, and the assimilation of cultural values and beliefs. The processes by which each of these factors combines to produce an individual personal identity have many differences, including the degree of free will or choice involved. Some aspects are inherited as surely as genetic qualities are while others are chosen and may be revised or rejected outright. For this reason no individual is simply an exemplar of a culture or civilization.


At this time of year, in the United States, in my personal case all of these elements present themselves for reflection.

I was raised and mostly educated in the United States whose melting pot environment nonetheless extends the cultural values and beliefs of the West. I have also assimilated most of its civilizational norms which govern my behavior, dress, speech patterns and economic aspirations.

My family came from Norway and held to many of the traditions and customs of the "old country." Even as a child I became aware of so-called ethnic distinctions and understood that my way of expressing joy or sadness, for example, would be forever different from my Italian neighbors.

As an adult I converted to Judaism which on the one hand is a universal religion (and that primarily is what I converted to) but is also clearly a civilization and one that even in the most open and tolerant polity is not ever easily or fully assimilated into the host civilization (as determined by nation-state).

Finally, again as an adult, I became fascinated by profoundly appreciative of -- and smitten by I once said-- all things Chinese on both cultural and civilizational planes.

The existential meaning of post-modern has to do with the widespread possibility and relative ease for an individual to construct his own identity by inheriting and making choices such as those that characterize my circumstance.

Today is the second day of Chanukah, a historical/civilizational festival that remembers a conflict with Greek civilization. In my family we celebrate with the traditional latkes which are European, ableskiver, a Scandinavian delight that resembles another traditional and European Chanukah dish, jelly doughnuts, and of course we eat Chinese food. Since most of my family is not Jewish nor was my upbringing the blending is inevitable. In the United States it is overwhelmingly the Christmas season and the style of much of our festivity reflects that. That we are preparing to leave for China in less than two weeks focuses our attention in another direction.

Returning to our main theme of cultural exchange I wonder how I participate in this process. In some way internally I do with every breath I take. My personal identity is a dynamic equilibrium of cultural exchange. Like Jacob d'Ancona when I go to China I will not be a clear-cut example of my city or country of origin. My economic mission, to establish the basis for Chinese students to enroll in special programs of Polytechnic University in Brooklyn, means that I, like Jacob d'Ancona, am a trader. And the trade is ostensibly about culture. But the culture, i.e., the philosophy I embrace and continue to pursue, derives from multiple civilizational and cultural elements including the one that I officially prepare to exchange. My mediating of the trade is somehow a reflexive and self-mediating act.

If this then resembles the future do we look forward to peace and amity among nations, always recognizing ourselves in the other, or do we proclaim on the basis of self-serving economic interests (as George W. Bush and company seem to have done) exaggerated civilizational conflicts to justify power struggles? To be continued.

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Sun - December 14, 2003

China, cultural exchange, educational tourism, technology, free speech and Internet chat


The flowery kingdom, now divided into China, Hong Kong and Taiwan, is having a difficult time managing the opportunities for dialogue available on the Web in internet chat rooms. The electronic exchange, combining as it does anonymity and directness, is confounding the social engineers of the three polities in distinctive but quite similar ways.

Nicholas Kristof in a New York Times Op Ed piece on December 13 reports on an experiment he attempted in Chinese internet chat rooms. Disguising himself as an ordinary individual and writing in Chinese he tried to post on several chat rooms the question "Why is Prime Minister Wen Jiabao off in America kowtowing to the imperialists when he should be solving more important problems at home." It did not get by the censors. A milder version was also censored but his third attempt was deemed acceptable by, as he put it, a cabianqui referring to the term for a ball that nicks the corner of the table in ping-pong. The third version was: "Prime Minister Wen Jiabao's visit to America has been very successful, but I wonder if he is wasting too much time abroad instead of focusing on our own important problems like unemployment?"

Similar efforts to nuance the politically acceptable in chat rooms is becoming an issue in Hong Kong. This report from Human Rights Watch discusses the problem. Just as with educational tourism and technology transfer there is in Internet chat rooms great potential for both great liberation and empowerment but simultaneously control and manipulation. One great paradox of technology is that it always presents itself in the guise of freedom, offering an easier and more effective life, but at the same time it enforces uniformity and compliance to external standards.

Kristof concludes his column noting that historically the Chinese would rebel when they had the chance and not necessarily when most oppressed. Thus we can anticipate, he believes , significant protest to come in China. Given the expansion of cultural exchange programs and educational tourism and the ease of communication made possible by technology a Tiananmen like violent repression is unlikely. But this is one reason why a "one China" policy is important despite the fact that political reunion between Taiwan and China is not going to happen. The point is to define a culturally Chinese form of freedom of expression, a form permitting cabianqiu but no more.

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Fri - December 12, 2003

The commodification of culture


Yesterday's entry is unclear and incomplete. I am trying to connect official foreign policy positions, in general but the example is the one China policy as viewed by China, Taiwan and the U.S., with the theme of cultural exchange and tourism. Foreign policy posturing, cultural definition and commercial tourism all must coincide in national identity. We add to this mix the specific features of technology.

Perhaps it is the case that the tourism most sought after by Taiwan and China is that of overseas Chinese. Both want to persuade those in the diaspora that they are the true inheritors and guardians of the Chinese cultural heritage. This is indeed fascinating since the primary way to establish such stature is successful modernization, or in other words Westernization. The remnant of classical Chinese civilization is preserved, primarily for tourists, theme-park like, and asserted to be the font of contemporary wisdom and success. When John Dewey visited China and lectured about pragmatism he was told that its true roots were found in Ming neo-Confucianism.

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Thu - December 11, 2003

One China policy, tourism, commodity exchange and the new meaning of sovereignty


The one China policy has rested on an ambiguous unwillingness to acknowledge the truth. In recent years the unwillingness resided mostly within official U.S. policy as both China and Taiwan were beginning to make public statements that revealed their own disbelief in the myth of one China, although in different ways and to different ends. Taiwan began to speak of independence meaning that they acknowledged that they were not really the head of all of China in exile. China on the other hand reacts not with the threat of a police action to bring in a wayward province but rather that any forceful attempt to prevent Taiwan's independence would in fact be a military action within the international arena. Now the US in its diplomatic language is moving away from the ambiguous formulation of one China to assert that neither side should disturb the balance. The question why interests me. Certainly the United States has not avoided bellicose language in other equally or more sensitive situations. Why not say to both Taiwan and China that military engagement between them is unacceptable and that should it begin the U.S. would intervene to maintain the current situation of de facto sovereignty of each.

The answer has to do with the changing understanding of sovereignty in a world where commercial forms of exchange distribute power and authority along an economic rather than a political axis. In the eyes of the U.S, China is powerful because it is both a vast market and a growing producer of goods. China currently is a market for both goods and services but the day is soon upon us when there will be very little of either that is essential to China's well being. As China's universities and other knowledge industries grow the U.S. will no longer be in the enviable position of controlling desired technology. What we will be able to transfer will be only those commodities and services that are perceived as desirable rather than practically useful. Thus the power relationship between nations becomes a matter of the manipulation of the desires of the buying masses. Diplomatic relations themselves will be a matter fully subordinated to satisfying the expectations of the people.

The United States as the agent of the American buying public needs to export desired items (such as entertainment) in order to permit that buying public to purchase what it needs from the world's productive economies. Currently, in the case of China, in addition to such items as clothing and increasingly high-tech items, are the items of cultural exchange as transfered through tourism. In short we need to sustain exchange between the U.S. and both China and Taiwan. To do this our products must be desired by the buying masses. For this to be possible the United States cannot risk disturbing the political ecology of the China-Taiwan relationship.

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Thu - December 4, 2003

Technology Transfer and Cultural Exchange


Cultural exchange suggests trading ideas and artifacts. Technology transfer is more like colonization.

The more I think about exchange programs between engineering colleges or technological universities the more puzzling the notion becomes. Technology is not so much exchanged as superseded. Cultural exchange implies mutual respect, equity and respect for difference. Unlike cultures technologies are better or worse as measured by their overall efficiency and power. The question becomes how do representatives or agents of technology in those roles participate in mutually respectful cultural exchange? Of course actual students or faculty members may not represent the technologies they practice but insofar as the program they participate in is centered on technology training it seems that cultural exchange is ruled out. In this case the program becomes tourism, a visit to see how others do things without any genuine expectation of anything more than the satisfaction of curiosity.

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Sun - November 30, 2003

Jacob D'Ancona and the business of tourism and cultural exchange


In the 13th century an Italian Jewish merchant, Jacob D'Ancona, made an extensive tour of China for the purpose of trade. The record of his experiences, whether genuine or not is a matter of great dispute, has been translated and published, as The City of Light. Here is an excerpt from a review, published in the Sunday Telegraph, by a descendent of Jacob.

Seven hundred and twenty-six years ago, a learned Jewish merchant called Jacob set out from the Adriatic port of Ancona on a journey that would take him from Italy through Syria, the Persian Gulf and India. He reached China before Marco Polo, and like the Venetian who followed him, resolved to write an account of his travels. Some time after his return to Italy in 1273, Jacob wrote a magisterial memoir, more than 400 pages long, called The City of Light ...

[It] describes an epic adventure across the deserts and on the high seas. It is far better literature than the book that Polo wrote with his cellmate Rustichello of Pisa. Although Christopher Columbus read The Travels for inspiration, he might have learned more from The City of Light ...

Jacob's book is the intensely personal recollection of a scholar who also happened to be a wealthy merchant, a man who knew as much about the wisdom of the rabbinical sages as he did about the value of the velvet, wool, gold, wire, mercury, linen, soap, wind and corn which he took with him to
the Orient. At [the book's] heart is an unparalleled account of medieval Chinese society and manners seen through the eyes of a Western intellectual.

[For a contrasting view read this web review which gives some sense of the dispute over the text's authenticity.]

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I want to use this book as the basis for reflection on several aspects of tourism and cultural exchange. For the first Jacob 's journey presents an example of the grand tour. At every stop he was in the very position of a tourist with the need to find suitable accommodations, acceptable food, exchange money, and discover the resources of the city. To do this he was required to engage the services of agents or to call upon local connections related to his family or business for favors. Secondly, as he settled into each city the chasm of cultural difference, only beginning with language limitations, had implications for everything he did. Thirdly, since he was a scholar his cultural exchange, as opposed to his business dealings, focused on mutual education. He wanted to learn the habits of his hosts and they in turn, to a greater or lesser extent, wanted to acquire an understanding of his. What we might call seminars or debates were conducted with the objective of learning the strengths and virtues of each culture, if not to demonstrate the superiority of one over the other. And fourthly, of course this educational exchange was secondary, justified by the primary mercantile mission of the journey, the exchange of material goods. I suspect that if the journey had been made only for educational or cultural exchange that its purpose would not have been at all understood. This provides me with a clue for the real purpose of cultural/educational exchanges today: they are for the sake of economic exchange. I will return to this latter point in future entries. The final aspect has to do with the potential for and likely actual serious misunderstanding. Indeed even in the blurb cited above Jacob is called a Western intellectual but it is clear that by no stretch of the imagination could a Jewish merchant in his day really be the paradigm of a Western intellectual. The mention of Christopher Columbus alone makes that obvious! On the other side the portrayal of life in China tends toward being a pastiche of an imaginary realm of inscrutables. Yet generalizations however reductionist are the product of most or perhaps all cultural exchange.

In summary, this book poses 5 issues each deserving additional reflection:

1. Tourism creates dependency on the agency of local tour guides.
2. The existential impact of the sudden awareness of cultural difference or otherness.
3. Educational exchange creates the temptation to "prove" the superiority of one culture over the other.
4. The underlying economic justification for cultural/educational exchange.
5. The likelihood of serious misunderstanding due to reductionist interpretations of experiences.

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Fri - November 28, 2003

Trip plans taking shape


A little progress has been made on plans for the China trip. Eugene Yu from the Shanghai YMCA, where the Polytechnic student group had stayed in the Fall of 2001, has arranged hotel accommodations for Katie and me in Xian and Beijing. Lin Ping is arranging accommodations in Chengdu.

Some background reading is in order.

An interesting Website addresses the specific topic of tourism and cultural exchange in China. It comes from Central South University in Changsha, Hunan . The interesting feature of the Website does not consist in the breadth or depth of knowledge it conveys. On the contrary it contains very little, a fact exacerbated by the broken links. But what I do find fascinating is the attitude, apparently held with all sincerity by the students at the University in Changsha, that tourism will itself be sufficient to teach the untutored traveler something significant about Chinese culture and civilization.

I will comment on my preparatory reading from time to time.

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Tue - November 25, 2003

Cultural Exchanges and tourism


How is it possible for a tourist to be part of a genuine cultural exchange? As a tourist what do you bring and what do you take away? Normally tourists bring money and take away commodities and commodified experiences.

There is a certain culture of tourism, or rather there are a number of cultures of tourism. They range from a package tour to a resort focusing on an attraction created for the tourist industry such as a theme park to eco-tourism to literary tours to serendipitous backpacking the goal of which is to experience whatever comes along without too much advance planning. Some tourism takes the form of volunteer service in which an actual exchange can be calculated around some type of technology transfer. The type of tourism I want to reflect on is educational tourism such as student exchange programs. Indeed the purpose of this trip to China is an attempt to organize an exchange program for students and faculty at technological universities.

I have usually thought that educational exchange programs like all cultural exchange fostered international understanding, amity among peoples, appreciation for difference and at least a greater degree of toleration for the ways of others. In other words a general social good is fostered by these programs.

Student exchange programs within liberal arts programs are perhaps different. Those programs generally focus on language study and cultural and literary history. Exchange programs for students from technological universities might do that but if the students are studying within their disciplines the opportunity of language study or the study of cultural and literary history is quite insignificant. Either the student knows the language before studying abroad, or the program is conducted in the student's own language. Actually the language of instruction for most programs is English which has become the standard international language in our day. So when an electrical engineering student from China comes to the United States for one or two years to study electrical engineering, what is it beyond the technical study that the student receives and takes home at the end?

I have been told that the motivation for such students does not fall entirely within the category of cultural learning; rather the student is motivated by a perceived career value or future financial benefit on the assumption that a degree earned partly (or completely) abroad will have a recognized added value, perhaps because the instruction was more advanced or the lab facilities were more modern.

These are certainly understandable and if true good reasons for choosing to take part in an educational exchange program But I wonder if such reasons are the only reasons whether a general social good will have been furthered or not. These questions need to be refined.

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Mon - November 24, 2003

First plans


Katie and I will be traveling to China and Korea in January.

There is a chance for Polytechnic to establish a student exchange program with Sichuan Normal University in Chengdu. I have been asked to go there to negotiate the terms. We will spend about a week in Chengdu and then travel to Xian and on to Beijing. I will visit technological universities in both cities with a tentative view to setting up exchange programs with them as well. It will be my fourth time in China but Katie's first. After China we will go on to Korea where Katie will explore the possibility of exhibiting.

In this log I will try to reflect upon the meaning and value of cultural exchanges.

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