Considerações Gerais Sobre a Questão

Information on technical knowledge has become, with the industrial productive process expansion, a basic factor for the reproduction of capital. In such a context, Information is achieving an ever growing political characteristic leading to the division of the world into information-poor countries and information-rich countries. In spite of its potential as a development tool for the countries, technical knowledge due to the ever growing restrictions to its circulation into society through a miriad of laws and regulations as well as the emergence of a new international labour division has become an important hegemonic factor thus leading the periferic on information-poor countries to enter into their transition to the XXI century within a framework of backwardness as well as of inadequate conditions to deal in full with this new production factor that technology has become. The limits that are being drawn to the access of technical knowledge produced in the more developed centers, through restrictions imposed to true commerce of technology or through the more rigid legislations that are being proposed in the field of industrial property, can lead to disastrous conseqüentes, turning technical knowledge into the most powerful domination tool for centric countries and, consequentely, a submission tool for the periferic ones. The most important tool for development would then become its mam inhibiting agent.