Description
Convergence of science and technology means more than simply the creation ofmultidisciplinary teams to address hard problems, in which effective communication takes place across distinct fields. Importantly, it also requires development of new concepts and new methodologies for research, design, and collaboration that bridge across fields in time while preserving their distinctive characters and aims at overarching goals. Especially in engineering and the development of new technologies, but also even in areas considered pure science, convergence must integrate ethical analysis and social science concerning both the intended and potential unintended consequences of the work and seeking the best means to integrate new ideas into human culture. Thus convergence not only brings together all the fields of science and technology but also unites them with society.
This handbook is the culmination of 15 years of conferences and publications, including several book-length reports, to which literally hundreds of scientists, engineers, and societal leaders from around the world contributed. The editors and the authors of the 74 chapters owe a great debt to the many other people who contributed their time and wisdom to the development of the convergence vision and the specific innovations needed to achieve it.
The initial vision focused on the four “NBIC” fields: Nanotechnology, Biotechnology, Information technology, and new technologies based on Cognitive science.
As the meetings progressed, the importance of the related pure sciences and the human implications received increasing attention. This handbook became both possible and necessary, after the work of so many contributors developed a comprehensive perspective on the centrality of science and engineering in the human future, with many of the specific technical and social components required for significant accomplishment. While this handbook was designed as an integrated unity, to maximize its clarity and utility the chapters are arranged in six sections, each with an introductory chapter that primarily identifies key concepts, rather than summarizing the topical chapters that follow:
1. Concepts and Methods: This first section examines several ways of conceptualizing science, technology, and society as complex, dynamic, interacting systems.
2. Foundational Technologies Platform: Here the NBIC heritage is central, with an emphasis on how specific sets of fields converge with each other.
3. Human-Scale Platform: This section emphasizes partnerships between individual human beings, emerging technologies, and advancement of the scientific enterprise.
4. Earth-Scale Platform: Preserving Earth as the unified home of humanity requires many kinds of international, cross-cultural, and large-scale environmental collaboration.
5. Societal-Scale Platform: The emergence of global society requires understanding the ways in which all people may collaborate positively through the wise application of science and technology.
6. Convergence in Education: Innovative training of professional scientists and engineers within higher education is essential, but consideration is also given to how schools and informal educational activities of many kinds can play their most valuable roles.
The concepts and methods come first, in order to provide a roadmap of the tools needed to render convergence both possible and beneficial. Then the four “platforms” cover the territory in relatively coherent regions, each much larger than the four original NBIC fields, but in a similar manner interacting with each other, even while they can be distinguished for the sake of clarity. The concluding section then considers the needs and opportunities for progressive innovation in education broadly defined.
Since this handbook is a reference work, each chapter is self-contained and can be understood separately from the others, but all of them harmonize with each other and are most valuable together. Thus the chapters themselves exemplify convergence and its dynamic relationship to creative divergence. This handbook is a conceptual toolkit the reader may use to contribute in new ways to human progress.
