Re: High-Tech, Please Define.

[bill london <london@moscow.com>]

Doug:
    I urge you to reread what I wrote in my original post.  Also, please
mellow out.  I did not make the kinds of comments that you accuse me of
writing.
    I will try to respond to your comments below.
BL


Doug Farris wrote:

> Dear BL,
>
> In today's v-2020 you said:
>
> "I think it's time to stop this slide.  Let's tighten up the rules to
> make this high-tech park what it was designed to be.  If we fill it up
> with offices, we won't have it if a real high-tech business wants to
> locate here."
>
> You ask to "tighten up the rules" to keep High-tech, High-tech! Would
> you call making little plastic widgets with expensive computer modeling
> programs "high-tech" or "LOW tech"? Is it the end use of the product,
> say in a space shuttle, the value of high or low tech?
>
> At what standard do we place the line between high and low tech? Is it
> the cost of the machinery or the use of "experts" (professionals) the
> higher standard? Are you calling what I do "low tech" because I only use
> a computer to do my drawings and billings with and not operate some
> robot to do the work for me? (I do electrical contracting)
>
> I suppose you would call a "High-tech" phone calling center a good
> thing. Or even a petro-chemical refinery, I here they use a lot of
> expensive computer controlled devices that have to be programmed by
> highly educated control device programers on expensive computers.....
>

I was using "high-tech" in exactly the same sense that it was used by the
proponents of Alturas five years ago.  Vision 2020 sponsored three public
meetings (held at the UI Incubator) to discuss the public support for
Alturas Park.  At those meetings, and in the volumes of stuff written about
this park, "high-tech" was regularly used to describe the kinds of
businesses that were hatched at the incubator.  These new companies used
recent technological advances to build or create a new product or service.
These "high-tech" businesses were thought to mean high-paying jobs for
Moscow's citizens.
    Consistently, "high-tech" was NOT used to describe professionals who use
computers, etc in their activities, like lawyers, accountants, or stock
brokers.
    And that is the difference I am concerned with.  As a Moscow taxpayer, I
bought into Alturas as a place to house young "high-tech" businesses, not a
place for professionals to have offices.
BL




>
> How can you discriminate against me for my seeming lack of upper level
> math skills? So what if I'm not "gifted and talented"? So what if I AM
> "wiz-bang" disabled I still count as a person. As are all the other
> "disabled" lawyers, doctors, dentists, accountants, stock brokers, and
> even professional writers. (my wife feels discriminated against this
> one) How did you become the diviner of what standard is High-Tech and
> what deficiencies qualify some skill as "Low-Tech"

Please.  I have not used "wiz-bang" or "disabled" or whatever.
BL

>
>
> I thought this was a free country and that the tax money I give may be
> used exclusively by my representatives to allow equal access to public
> funded business parks for all underprivileged "school to work"
> graduates.
>
> I hear you say " I just do not want my tax money supporting a stock
> broker's move out of downtown." Isn't that a little like me saying "I
> just do not want my tax money supporting a public school child's move to
> second grade".
>
> What's egalitarian for the high tech goose is equal for the educating of
> the gander.

I want my tax money to support Alturas Park as a home for "high-tech"
businesses in Moscow (as it was described from the start).  I do not want my
tax money to support a professional mall that brings sprawl to a wheat field
way outside of downtown.
Using your analogy, I think it is more appropriate to say that I want my tax
money to support public schools educating children--I do not want my tax
money supporting public schools with a completely different purpose.
BL

>
>
> I hope you get my point and that you see that you feel much the same as
> I do....
>

We can agree on that.  I, too, hope you get my point.
BL

>
> lemeno Doug!