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Convergence, Disruption, and Resilience
Mike Treder
Ethical Technology
Posted: Jul 29, 2010
Recently I was contacted by a reporter for a major newspaper and asked to answer a few questions about “future trends in emerging technologies.” Here is what I said.
Generally, what trends/innovations will there be in nanotechnology in the next 10 to 20 years?
A trend to watch in technology over the next decade is convergence at the nanoscale (the scale of individual atoms and their combinations into molecules). As techniques and tools are improved, as scientific knowledge of what actually happens at the nanoscale increases, and as researchers learn better ways to control and manage the construction of molecules, we could see information technology, biotechnology, and nanotechnology converge to create a new discipline of molecular engineering. If that kind of engineering can be automated and exponentially multiplied, the possibility exists for a new form of manufacturing, one that builds from the bottom up. This might take longer than 10 or 20 years to accomplish, but it will be interesting to watch the progress as it occurs.
How much will they change societies (for good or bad)?
Most people overestimate the amount of change that will take place in the short term and underestimate how much change will happen in the long term. I would be surprised if there are any innovations in the next decade that are revolutionary enough to disrupt society. But looking ahead 20, 30, or 40 years we should be surprised if there are not seriously disruptive changes. The trick, however, is figuring out which changes will take place first and which of those will be the most disruptive. It’s more than likely the unexpected, unanticipated changes that will make the biggest difference. That’s why we try to emphasize the need not just for prediction in our work at the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies, but for preparation—and the best form of preparation is one that incorporates resilience, the ability to absorb and adjust to rapid changes without undue disruption.
Are we prepared for such changes? Will they be radical, and how can we cope?
 A classic example of how technology affects society in unexpected ways is the impact of global warming. For more than a century, coal was mined, oil was collected, roads and factories were built, autos rolled off the assembly lines, and basically no one was able to look ahead and see that as a result humans were actually changing the climate of the Earth, far more than natural processes ever could. What will be the unintended consequences of the next round of technological advancement? It’s likely that some of them will be quite radical, perhaps as radical as global warming itself, and then we will have to find a way to cope with those changes as well. Are we prepared? No, not really, but our focus should be to develop not only a more sustainable human civilization, but also more adaptable and resilient systems of governance, economics, and production.
Mike Treder is a former Managing Director of the IEET.
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COMMENTS
I would be surprised if there are any innovations in the next decade that are revolutionary enough to disrupt society.
Really Mike?
So Graphene based computers running at THZ speeds, Practical VR on a cellphone sized device, and the strong likelihood of controlled stem cell therapies enabling the “regeneration” of nearly any form of damage done to the human body are not revolutionary enough to disrupt society?
I think you are being a little TOO complacent. But then again, I see an enormous number of “society disruptions” occurring this decade, from the three I listed above to social and political factors which will lead to disruptions. As I see it, we’re probably going to see more “societal disruption” this decade than we have since the Industrial Revolution, both world wars, and the Great Depression combined.
“humans were actually changing the climate of the Earth, far more than natural processes ever could”
Strange that you seem to say that natural processes can’t ever lead to at least as great climatic change as is currently going on. There have already been very big climatic changes before humans were around, you know:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleocene–Eocene_Thermal_Maximum
I definitely agree that we overestimate what we can achieve in the short term and underestimate the long term. One only need to turn to sci-fi movies for evidence of that. That said, I think we’re only beginning to see the disruptions of the technology we already have. Disruptions like mass global extinctions. And advances are now coming so quickly, that it’s near impossible to see only a few short years into the future.
I saw a news story recently that some experts were making predictions about who would lead the smart phone market in four years. Then I saw another article that checked on the experts’ predictions from four years previous, and these experts in the field didn’t even see the Apple iPhone nor Google Android coming - and both of them were in development at the time.
I would even say the iPad is a disruptive technology in the sense that it is changing the mobile computing landscape, changing the way people buy periodicals and books, replacing doctors charts in hospitals and text books in schools, and so on. I think those disruptions are good, but printing companies don’t.
I think the potential is there for a seriously disruptive technology in the next ten years. The candidates are already here, waiting to be unleashed - technologies such as geoengineering, genetic engineering and cloning of food, and artificial life, to name a few. And the disruptions caused by industrial pollution, agriculture, mass media, and world travel are just the tops of the iceberg. For example, invasive species, acidification of the oceans, obesity, pandemics, etc.
In the short term, I think we’re going to start seeing some serious disruptions. In the long term I foresee a completely engineered planet, where every species of life and ecosystem on earth has been engineered or evolved to survive in a new climate, or the climate itself is engineered to minimize the mass extinction that’s already in progress.
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