Science, Technology and Culture: Mechanism and Mode of Integrated Development
■ It is necessary to promote the deep integration and interactive development of culture and science and technology from people’s thinking, organization and action.
■ Modern cultural industry should follow the law of "model leading, innovation driving and coordinated development"
■ We should attach great importance to the integrated development of industrial model and technology, and pay attention to the cultivation and transformation of technology.
■ The base should play the role of experimental field for the integration of culture and science and technology, not simply the role of property and intermediary science and technology in the development of modern culture. Culture and science and technology are the concrete manifestations of human material civilization and spiritual civilization. Scientific and technological innovation is a catalyst for the evolution and development of social and cultural forms, and at the same time, advanced culture is an important driving force and source of scientific and technological innovation. The mutual promotion and integration of culture and science and technology is the most important feature of the development of human civilization.
Nowadays, with the rapid development of network information technology as the main feature of scientific and technological progress. Traditional cultural industries bring forth the old and bring forth the new-the innovation of sound and photoelectric technology has added rich expressive force and appeal to stage performances. The rapid development of audio and video processing and network communication technology has provided a broad development space for radio, film and television. The rise of digital publishing has changed the traditional mode of news publishing and mass reading. At the same time, digital technology has also provided necessary technical support for the protection and inheritance of cultural heritage.
Emerging network culture is booming-new cultural creation methods such as original online literature and micro-movies have unveiled the mystery of niche and professional cultural creation since ancient times, realized popular and open creation that everyone can participate in, and activated the cultural creation market; The online social entertainment platform has built a bridge for the public to communicate and realize the interaction and crossing between the real society and the virtual society. The application store platform mode of content aggregation has changed the traditional cultural production and management mode of individuals, studios and other small groups, realized the intensification, scale and industrialization of cultural management, and innovated a new mode of integrated development of cultural services and industrial manufacturing.
Generally speaking, the role of science and technology in the development of modern culture is mainly manifested as: enhancing the creativity, expressiveness, appeal and communication of culture, realizing the popularization of culture, expanding cultural consumption, promoting the industrialization of culture and promoting the integration and development of related industries. The high integration of culture and science and technology in modern society fully proves that culture and science and technology promote each other, and harmonious development is the historical law that drives social progress.
Understanding of the Integration of Culture and Science and Technology With the advent of the new economic era of network information triggered by the high-tech wave, the network culture industry has developed rapidly, which has had a great impact on the development mode of traditional culture, and a number of science and technology enterprises have gradually become the main operators of emerging cultures. Due to their lack of awareness and ability of scientific and technological innovation, it is difficult for traditional cultural business units to independently complete the cultural transformation and development to adapt to the new network economy. Facing the new opportunities brought by the global Internet service economy, technology-based enterprises actively try a new economic model for the development of online cultural content industry by using their own technological advantages, but this new model of "technology-led" has encountered the bottleneck problem of lack of content resources.
So, how to understand the integrated development of culture and technology? Generally speaking, the integration of culture and technology is mainly manifested in three levels: people, organizations and activities. From the perspective of human beings, the current education system in China has implemented the division of arts and sciences since middle school, which affects the growth and development path of human life, thus forming a focused thinking mode of science and engineering background and a personalized and divergent thinking mode of humanities and social sciences background, which affects the integration of culture and science and technology from the perspective of human behavior. In the organizational function of the government, because our culture and science and technology are in parallel management mode and lack of interactive mechanism, it also affects the organic integration and interactive development of culture and science and technology. Finally, from the perspective of social activities, for many years, China’s cultural development has mainly focused on cultural undertakings, and the traditional cultural field has its own complete cultural development system, which pays more attention to public service and social benefits in the evaluation system, and is a mass social activity; The development of cultural industry takes the realization of economic benefits as the main goal, and should follow the law of group and intensive economic activities in the industrial chain.
Therefore, under the economic mode of modern cultural industry, the development mode of "content is king" which focuses solely on cultural resources enterprises and the mode of "science and technology leading" which focuses on science and technology enterprises cannot effectively lead the development direction of modern cultural industry. Only by realizing the high integration of "content is king" and "science and technology leading" will it be the mainstream trend of great cultural development and prosperity in the future. Therefore, "the integration of culture and science and technology" must promote its deep integration and interactive development from the unity of people’s thoughts, organizations and activities.
Principles to be followed in the development of the integration of culture and science and technology in China Due to the individualized characteristics of cultural and artistic creation, most cultural management modes are still the traditional manual product economic model at present, and it is impossible to achieve large-scale and mass production. Although the high value of artworks can bring rich profits to individual creators, it is still impossible to realize the intensive and collectivized high income of modern manufacturing economy. Therefore, if we apply the economic model of product manufacturing industry to operate the cultural industry, it will be difficult to achieve large-scale operation with high income and high added value. On the contrary, if we adopt the modern service economy model and operate the cultural industry in a coordinated development mode with cultural operation as the main body, we will achieve higher economic benefits. Take the comparison between animation and games as an example. At present, animation is still the operation mode of product manufacturing economy, and it is also the development mode of traditional handmade product economy. The operation is still dominated by the sales mode of similar products sold to media channels such as TV stations, which makes it difficult for most animation companies to get rid of the predicament of survival. The online game, with operation service as its main profit model, has become the main economic growth pole of the online culture industry.
Compared with the industrial manufacturing industry, the service industry has a complex industrial structure and a long industrial chain, with multiple roles, and the main body is the operator. It is difficult to optimize and reorganize the entire industrial chain only by technological breakthrough, and the change of development mode is the core element of industrial upgrading. Therefore, compared with the principle of innovation-driven and coordinated development followed by modern manufacturing industry, the principle of modern service industry development needs to be added in front, which is "model leading, innovation-driven and coordinated development". This is the key to the development of service industry. Just like driving a car, the mode is like a steering wheel, and the technology is an engine. Only by cooperating with each other can we reach our destination. The successful case is consumer e-commerce. First of all, it has a good model, which technically solves the two key bottlenecks of online payment and express delivery, making it the fastest growing emerging industry in recent years.
China’s cultural development system has always been a pattern of coordinated development of cultural undertakings and cultural industries with cultural undertakings as the main line under the socialist core value system. The so-called cultural industry refers to the operating industry engaged in the production of cultural products and the provision of cultural services. However, for a long time, China’s cultural undertakings and cultural industries have not been separated, and the operating cultural industries have long relied on the government, lacking the strength and ability to break through the market. The Sixth Plenary Session of the Seventeenth Central Committee of the Communist Party of China pointed out the direction for cultural reform and development, emphasizing the need to vigorously develop cultural industries and promote them to become pillar industries of the national economy.
The primary task of developing cultural industry is to reform the system and mechanism. Culture is the lifeblood of a country’s social development. At present and in the future, the development mechanism of China’s cultural industry will still be a pattern in which state-owned cultural enterprises are the main body of monopolistic competition and various economic components develop together under the socialist core value system. In order to develop cultural industry according to the socialist market economy and the law of industrial development, we must completely abandon the previous inherent development thinking that cultural undertakings and industries should not be separated, and rush into mass national movements, change the small and scattered cultural business activities of state-owned cultural enterprises, adapt to the development trend of modern economy, make full use of modern scientific and technological means, innovate cultural service brands, unite small and medium-sized cultural and technological enterprises in society, and jointly create a modern cultural service economic environment and industrial chain with large-scale and intensive operation, clear division of labor, orderly competition and coordinated development.
The mode of science and technology promoting the development of cultural industry The National Science and Technology Innovation Conference put forward "enterprise as the main body and collaborative innovation", but the problem of transforming science into technology and then forming productivity has always been a difficult problem that puzzles our country’s scientific and technological progress. From the international innovation mode of science and technology promoting industrial development, there are mainly four modes. One is the innovation mode of large groups, that is, large groups use their own research institutes as the main entities for technical reserves and scientific transformation into technical products, and some technologies that they have not involved acquire small innovation units to supplement and improve their innovation systems through strong capital strength; The second is the entrepreneurial model, that is, some small innovation units gradually develop and grow through the innovation of single technology and new models, and finally join the ranks of large groups in the form of listing financing or be acquired by large groups to realize their own value; The third is the mode of technology cultivation. For example, in Taiwan Province, because there are not many large enterprise groups, ITRI plays the role of science and technology intermediary. On the one hand, it understands the actual needs of enterprises, on the other hand, it tracks the development of international science and technology, cultivates scientific problems into methods of technology realization, and then gives them to enterprises to realize; The fourth is the alliance innovation model, in which the upstream and downstream parties in the industrial chain jointly build a strategic alliance of industrial collaborative innovation to realize complementary advantages, division of labor and cooperation and benefit sharing.
Let’s look at the current situation of cultural and technological integration and innovation in China. First of all, in the organizational mode, the assets of the cultural group are small, and it is unable to build a group science and technology research institute to support its continuous innovation; Science and technology enterprises continue to copy the emerging western network culture development model, but the integration with content resources is not close enough, and the development mode is restricted. Secondly, in terms of development mode, the mode of content operation mainly adopts technology acquisition and sufficiency, lacking further innovation; The technology-led model lacks effective cooperation and benefit sharing with content providers, and the phenomenon of going it alone is serious. The multi-subject struggle in industrial development seriously restricts the formation of industrial chain.
Cultural science and technology innovation should pay more attention to the integrated application of technology, because in the service economy environment, there is still a certain gap in our country to form a new industrial development direction through original innovation. We say that the key to cultural industry innovation is the high integration of mode and technology, and the uniqueness of innovation subject is an important factor to ensure the formation of industrial chain. Therefore, at present, a strategy of cultural and technological innovation is to gather cultural and technological enterprises together through the demonstration base of cultural and technological integration, build a synergistic industrial alliance, select a subject, discuss the mode of industrial development together, innovate continuously in the process of cooperation, and form a sustainable innovative development pattern. (The author is a researcher at the Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and the head of the national expert group on cultural, scientific and technological innovation projects.)