You are invited to participate in a two-week-long cyberconference on the ‘converging technologies’ research agenda that has become prominent in recent years in science policy circles around the world. By ‘converging technologies’ is meant the channelling of research funding in nanotechnology, biotechnology, information technology and cognitive science into an interdisciplinary framework that can be used to enhance human performance and welfare.
The cyberconference is organized around a series of opening statements to which anyone may respond. They are reproduced at the end of this message. Generally speaking, the statements relate to our understanding of the current state of research vis-à-vis future prospects. Any comments made in the cyberconference are in the public domain and will be archived for research purposes. Consequently participants’ comments will be monitored for civility. However, participants are also encouraged to hyperlink relevant resources to support their opinions.
This project is sponsored by the European Union, under its Sixth Framework Research Programme, ‘Knowledge Politics and New Converging Technologies’. For more information about the programme, see http://www.converging-technologies.org/.
To participate in the cyberconference, go to: http://www.converging-technologies.org/cyberconference. We anticipate the start date to be Monday 7th May.
The ultimate aim of the cyberconference is to provide a public airing of reasoned global opinion on the future of humanity in light of a quickly shifting research frontier. The cyberconference convenor, Steve Fuller, will intervene for ‘real time’ discussion (in English) at the midpoint. It is planned that this will be from 18.00 to 20.00 (Central European Time) on Tuesday 15th May. But this time may change.
It is our intention to conduct this cyberconference in as many of the world’s languages as possible, by which we mean parallel streams, each going in their own direction. We anticipate streams in at least French, German, Spanish, Polish, Hebrew, Portuguese/Brazlian and Chinese/Taiwan. For this purpose we are looking for people willing to translate the opening statements into other languages and monitor the subsequent discussion in their native languages which will be linked to our website. They will also need to make a brief summation of the issues raised, which will be posted in English. (The responses to the opening statements do not need to be translated into English.) Those who are interested in providing translation of the opening statements and monitoring the proceedings in their native languages should contact either [log in to unmask] or [log in to unmask].
ECONOMIC IMPACT
The converging technologies agenda will more than pay for itself within a generation, as only marginal improvements in the performance of human beings would be needed to trigger a quantum leap in the global capacity for wealth production. This might include cutting the number of lost workdays from sickness or adding another year or two to effective job performance.
REGULATORY LIMITS
The role of national governments and international agencies in the converging technologies agenda should be mainly to ‘regulate’ research but not to dictate its exact terms or to dominate the resources necessary for its pursuit. The actual pace and direction of research should be left to specialists in the relevant sciences and technologies.
CARROTS AND STICKS
When it comes to converging technologies, ‘regulation’ should be interpreted broadly to include both the anticipation of potential harms and inequities and the provision of tax relief and legal protection designed to encourage the development of the relevant innovations. Since these innovations have the potential to re-define the human condition in fundamental ways, any proposed regulation should include a stick as well as a carrot.
HISTORICAL PRECEDENTS
An apt historical analogue for the magnitude of the impact that nanotechnology is likely to have on both the conduct of research and the economy is information technology, where in over a single generation computers came to be a universal mediator of knowledge and wealth production production. Allowing for the relevant developments, nanotechnology should occupy a role in 2050 similar to that information technology in 2000.
THE FUTURE OF WELFARE
Transhumanist visionaries like Ray Kurzweil and Bill Joy have shown a remarkable lack of social science imagination in their heightened sense of security threats from recent and anticipated developments in genetics, nanotechnology, and robotics. They forget that ‘necessity is the mother of invention’. If anything, rather than unleashing another Cold War, the converging technologies agenda is likely to foster the merger of national defence and medical care in a general ‘welfare science’.
IMPLICATIONS FOR EVOLUTION
As the enhancement of human capabilities and performance becomes integrated into everyday life, the weight of our evolutionary past will weigh more lightly. Indeed, once an entire generation has grown up used to prosthetic limbs, silicon chip implants and nanobotic medicine, talk of the genetic legacy of our hunter-gatherer ancestors will sound quaint, if not reactionary, much like reverential talk of ‘tradition’ sometimes sounds today. Darwin will finally go the way of his 19th century comrades Marx and Freud.
CHANGE IN VALUES
Short of total annihilation of Homo sapiens, it really doesn’t matter if the converging technologies agenda ends up having substantial negative consequences. By the time those consequences will have been realized, society’s value system will have adapted to them. They will then appear as a fair price to pay for the benefits made possible by the relevant advances. After all, the doomsayers 100 years ago turned out to be correct when they predicted that the proliferation of cars and planes would pollute the environment, but should we have listened to them then?
PROACTIONARY PRINCIPLE?
Some supporters of the converging technologies agenda have called for a proactionary principle to mitigate, if not replace, the precautionary principle that is nowadays often invoked to regulate research and development. The proactionary principle would have the need to do good overall outweigh the prospect of whatever particular harms might result. Among the policies licensed by this principle include limited liability laws for the application of new technologies and the liberalisation of conditions under which people might offer themselves for innovative treatments.