KEY TECHNOLOGY INDUSTRIES IN THE WATERLOO REGION: CANADA'S TECHNOLOGY TRIANGLE (CTT)

Key technology industries, or high-tech industries, as they are frequently called, are often thought to provide a community with a sound economic base for present and future development. For this reason many communities try to attract or nurture such industries. This article presents results from a sample of 33 key technology firms in Canada's Technology Triangle (CTT), consisting of the cities of Guelph, Cambridge, and Kitchener-Waterloo. It suggests that many are local firms, small, frequently spin-offs of university research endeavours, and research-intensive. The larger ones are less research-intensive and more production oriented. All are surprisingly strongly tied, in terms of input and output linkages, to economic activities within a 100-km radius, which includes the Toronto area. Skilled labour and local residence / education are the strongest location factors. The relatively favourable industrial climate in the CTT region should enable key technology industries to flourish in the area. Il est supposé que les industries de haute technologie fournissent une base solide pour le développement éco-nomique des municipalités. Pour cette raison de nom-breuses communautés essaient d'attirer ou de faire naǐtre de telles industries. Cet article présente les résultats d'un sondage auprès de 33 entreprises de haute technologie dans les municipalités de Guelph, Cambridge et Kitchener-Waterloo (Triangle Technologique du Canada - TTC). En général, ce sont des entreprises locales souvent issues (spin-offs) de I'université de Waterloo, de taille petite et orientées vers la recherche. Par contre, les entreprises plus importantes sont moins orientées vers la recherche et plus vers la production. Toutes ces entreprises sont étroitement imbriquées en termes de liens d'entrée et de sortie; leurs activités économiques se situent dans un rayon de 100 km, qui inclut Toronto. Les facteurs de localisation les plus importants sont: ‘la main-d'oeuvre qualifiée' et la proximité des lieux résidence /éducation. Les conditions industrielles relativement favorables du CTT devraient aider les industries de haute technologie à prospérer dans cette région.     

Im Blickwinkel der Technik: Neue Verhältnisse von Wissenschaftstheorie und Wissenschaftsgeschichte

Changing Perspectives – From the Experimental to the Technological Turn in History and Philosophy of Science. In the 1960s the philosophy of science was transformed through the encounter with the history of science, resulting in a collaborative venture by the name of “History and Philosophy of Science” (HPS). Philosophy of science adopted ever more regularly the format of the case study to reconstruct certain episodes from the history of science, and historians were mostly interested in the production of scientific knowledge. The so‐called “experimental turn” of the 1980s owed to this interaction between philosophy and history. Its guiding question remained quite traditional, however, namely “How do the sciences achieve an agreement between representation and reality?” Only the answers to this question broke with tradition by focusing not on theory but on the role of instruments and experiments. – Roughly 30 years after the experimental turn, another transformative encounter appears to be taking place. HPS is being transformed in the encounter with philosophy of technology. From the point of view of philosophy of technology, the question does not arise whether and how the agreement of mind and world, representation and reality can be achieved. When things are constructed, built or made, human thinking and physical materiality are inseparably intertwined. Instead of seeking to describe a mind‐independent reality, technoscientific researchers are working to acquire and demonstrate capabilities of experimental or predictive control. When science is regarded as a kind of technology, a program of study opens up for epistemology and so do avenues for the historiography of science. History of science might now show how the problems and procedures of the sciences arise from and impinge back upon a world that is itself a product of science and technology. It thereby abandons its traditional HPS niche existence and joins forces with environmental history, history of technology, social, labor, and consumer history.     

Gaston Paris. August 9th, 1839–March 5th, 1903

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