Message from the CEO: High Technology International (Washington, DC)

Message from the CEO

Welcome to High Technology International.

Twenty-five years is a long time to be doing anything, let alone the same job. I suppose you do have to have some love (if not a love-hate) relationship to Technology, the Clients, the Global scale...

The average American job last 7 years, the average marriage 6.9 years, what does this tell us? Is is something about making a commitment and sticking with it? I was just reminded yesterday that we have outlasted some of the world's major corporations who have come and gone or merged over these two and a half decades of HTI.

We have seen almost all manufacturing gravitate East, along with jobs, to Thailand, China, Burma-we will call it Myanmar when Suu Kyi is free-Taiwan, Malaysia, Singapore and beyond. We have witnessed the rise of forced, child and slave labor in those countries, as in India (estimates up to perhaps 40% of production) and Bangladesh and mostly failed efforts by the U.N. and others to stem the tide.

As we request a report on the factory and work conditions from various suppliers, we are mostly met with the most incredulous responses, like "what difference does it make?" and "It is not your problem or concern.." We reject this approach, but try to gently encourage the other direction, and will continue to do so. As we are the importer/exporter and at times distributor, we lack the influence that major brands could exert, if they chose to.

Sadly, most companies outsource and rarely visit the actual production house in lands far off. So much for Reagan's theory of "Constructive Engagement" (as when he advocated that U.S. companies do business with Apartheid South Africa, therefore prolonging the misery).

We have been traveling, along with our agents, to trade shows worldwide, for two decades, searching for new tech innovations and solutions. Luckily, we now have enough cache' that inventors and designers are coming our way, in advance of the market, and we can have input into their creations. If you feel you have a product which needs our energy and insight, please feel free to contact us.

We now have in excess of 75 web names and sites, 70 business, 5 politics. We were told a long time ago not to mix religion, politics and business, which is hilarious, since they are the same thing. You are what you eat, what you make, how you make it, who is affected in the process, (just ask Union Carbide & the survivors of Bhopal, India), why and how.

Perhaps In The Future, we will come to common understanding about Human Rights, Animal Rights and the Environment and our total interdependency. We will also come to realize the need for encouragement and protection of Free Speech as it is the Oxygen for entrepreneurial enterprise. In our opinion, a 'Market Economy' (as is professed of China), can not be a 'Free Market', without the Free Exchange of Ideas, along with commerce.

All the best,

Douglas Pepper Lang (2nd November 2007)