h/t PatriotDreamer (WSJ) — Research spending and technology exports were some of the menu items Thursday evening when President Barack Obama sat down for dinner with corporate chieftains from Apple Inc., Facebook Inc. and Google Inc. 

At the home of venture capitalist John Doerr just outside San Francisco, Mr. Obama met with Apple’s Steve Jobs, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and Google’s Eric Schmidt, among others. The overall aim of the meeting was for Mr. Obama to discuss his competitiveness agenda, and to find new ways the government and private sector can work together to lift the shaky economy.  (Full Article)
Before the term technocracy was coined technocratic or quasi-technocratic ideas involving governance by technical experts were promoted by various individuals, most notably early socialist theorists such as Henri de Saint-Simon. This was expressed by the belief in state ownership over the economy, with the function of the state being transformed from one of political rule over men into a scientific administration of things and a direction of processes of production under scientific management.  Scientific socialist theorist Friedrich Engels had a similar view; the state would die out and ceases to be a state when the government of people and interference in social affairs is replaced by an administration of things and technical processes.
The American economist Thorstein Veblen was an early advocate of technocracy, and was involved in the Technical Alliance as was Howard Scott and M. King Hubbert. Veblen believed that technological developments would eventually lead toward a socialistic organization of economic affairs. Veblen saw socialism as one intermediate phase in an ongoing evolutionary process in society that would be brought about by the natural decay of the business enterprise system and by the inventiveness of engineers……… /SD