[governance] The danger of blindly trusting the technocrats

[Roland Perry]

In message <FC574C7F-8780-48F4-AC14-943AEB0E1692 at hserus.net>, at 
15:29:34 on Sun, 26 May 2013, Suresh Ramasubramanian <suresh at hserus.net> 
writes
>Equally, people with purely a policy or political background are going 
>to be just as poor in predicting consequences.  Either due to a lack of 
>awareness of operational reality, or a skewed perspective, or both.

Indeed, I thought that was already understood.

>There are comparatively very few people with both technical AND policy 
>knowledge, and while the cross fertilization between these two streams 
>happens, it doesn't happen as often as I would wish .. and at least in 
>some sections of civil society's eyes such cross fertilization produces 
>"tainted" people.

I like to think I know a little about both fields, having started as an 
engineer designing computers and networks, then becoming interested in 
the way the law and policy was struggling to keep up with real life (and 
all the fun having gone out of computers and networks once they'd become 
commodity items).

As for being "tainted", I'm very sorry to report that recently one 
prospective client was nervous about my participation in this list, on 
the grounds that it might demonstrate that I was too much of a 
"sympathiser".
-- 
Roland Perry

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