From: olson@mydual.uucp (Kirtland H. Olson)
Subject: Re: RFD: sci.techxfer
Organization: The Harvard Group, 01451-0667
Date: Tue, 21 Jul 1992 17:04:42 GMT

In article <14fbt7INNfji@agate.berkeley.edu> adam@soda.berkeley.edu (Adam J Richter) writes:

>In article <1992Jul20.204409.25209@uunet.uu.net> richard@technology.com (Richard Murphy) writes:

>>Request for discussion on the creation of a newsgroup to cover
>>all aspects of technology transfer.
>>
>>The group will be called sci.techxfer and be unmoderated.
>>
>>The purpose of this group will be to discuss all issues related
>>to technology transfer efforts worldwide. This includes 
>>licensing technologies, patents, locating appropriate technologies,
>>advertising available technologies, announcing sources of
>>information, and prototype development. 

        [stuff deleted]

>>-- 
>>richard@technology.com

>
>	I think that the concept of "technology transfer" is too
>ill-defined to be meaningful.  

While I would disagree because the topic is widely discussed off the net,
and there are 20-year-old books on the subject as well as many research
papers, I have a question.  Why would we restrict discussion to
well-defined topics?  That's not to say we should never have
any well-defined topics, but to ask why the net would be inappropriate
as a place to discuss the fuzzy ones?

>We already have comp.patents and
>misc.int-property to discuss whether or not it works to treat ideas
>as if they were tangible objects works (which is an implicit
>assumption in your proposed charter).  

The proposed charter doesn't say that.  It was not the practice in the
Technology Transfer community in 1968, nor have I seen it since then. 
Many facets of the NASA program explicitly include transfer of know-how.
Industrial licensing of know-how already exists and does not strike me
as treating ideas as tangible objects.  Sending teams of employees to
the licensor for training does not exemplify treating ideas as objects,
but is known to be done.  There's more to this proposal than than the
alleged assumption suggests.

>It's not not like there is
>currently a lot of discussion on this topic on the net that
>needs a new newsgroup.  If you really think tha there is a need
>for such a forum, create a mailing list.

I see this as a proposal to bring to the net an interesting, active,
successful discussion from another reality.  I would like to read such a
group.  Even one example of another way to transfer a technology from
one part of society to another would interest me greatly.  It's a
discussion with real range in the sense of crossing one or more cultural
boundaries of government, business, industry, and academia.  It crosses
professional lines, requires translations among jargon vocabularies, and
often alters the economics of donor and donee.  And it wanders through
some of the most fascinating technical applications there are.

>-- 
>Adam J. Richter				409 Evelyn Avenue, Apt. 312
>richter@cerf.net			Albany, CA 94706
>					(510)528-3209
>Another member of the League for Programming Freedom (league@prep.ai.mit.edu).

What's more, the concepts seem to me more aligned with the LPF than with
the conventional modes of exchange.  That is, the search for places that
can benefit is active and the intent is to share the result.

How do others feel?

-- 
Kirtland H. Olson                     olson%mydual.uucp@alliant.com
Newsgroups: news.groups