b Kaldis_converging Technologies

Nanotechnology and Society

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CONVERGING TECHNOLOGIES

Byron Kaldis

General Editor SAGE Encyclopedia of Philosophy and the Social Sciences

Professor of Philosophy

Converging Technologies refers to one of the most recent but central developments in the field of advanced technologies, evidently of crucial social importance: the synergy or confluence of the four

major types of modern technology into a converging fusion. This is said to amount to a

revolutionary breakthrough that will radically change our lives.

I. Conceptualizing Technological Convergence

These four principal types of technology that are the protagonists of such convergence under which a constantly shifting lower-level disciplinary variety of their amalgamating technological

subfields falls comprise Nanotechnology, Biotechnology, Information Technology and Cognitive Technology (N-B-I-C for short or what is popularly known as the nano-bio-info-cogno fusion).

According to one of the dominant visions of this convergence, Nanotechnology is of paramount

importance being its core element or underlying vehicle.

What the phenomenon of technological convergence underlines is the fact that such a unifying

pattern exhibited by modern advanced technology is not just a mere option or contingent

eventuality but an inevitable outcome of the nature of modern science and technology. That the

traditional internal barriers separating types of technology, either in terms of subject matter or

principal method, are being undone is therefore something that should not surprise us. No further

advance in any field of technology can be expected to take place without impacting on, or without

having benefited by outcomes in, another. In general no advances in modern technology as such can

come about unless a corresponding internal interconnection is presupposed as a necessary

requirement. Examples abound: combining B with I is required along with N to accomplish

miniaturization of testing and diagnostic devices, i.e. lab-on-a-chip; biomedical implants in B must use devices made by I and so do such high-tech novelties like active skin; tools made by weak AI (that models some, but not all, aspects of human behaviour) already help us detect credit-card frauds; nanotechnology must combine with telecommunication technology for quantum

wells or quantum dots.

However, being an essentially recent development that is still in the making as well as a matter

almost exclusively debated in official reports that try to capture it and, what is more, recommend

how it must be formulated, technological convergence assumes many forms and corresponding

definitions. It is persistently evolving practically as a result of new technical developments and

interchanges of results, tools and methods from one subfield of technical research to another, on the

one hand, but it is also evolving conceptually as a result of being the subject matter of official

reports that more often than not act as manifestoes shaping the field.

Consequently its potential societal impact and how much the general public knows about it or in

what manner it is portrayed, all vary significantly, too. Policy recommendations are no exception to

this variability.

The more advanced technologies are converging, therefore, the more divergent the conceptions


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about this process prove to be.

This protean form is both the result of what actually is taking place at the level of technological

practice itself, being a constantly evolving field comprising more than a single technological

domain (four plus their numerous subfields, themselves intertwined), but also a matter of how the

practice of convergence is conceptualized. The latter, the way technological fusion is understood

(by governments, society, scientific institutions, other disciplines, some of the more self-conscious

and vocal practitioners themselves, and so forth), betrays a variety of definitions depending on (a)

different ways in which technological convergence has been promoted on each side of the Atlantic,

thus issuing in a major divide between US and European conceptions of it and (b) distinct core

elements on which technological convergence is said to hinge specifically - nanotechnology being

one such proposed unifier.

While there is more or less a consensus regarding the differences separating the American and the

European visions of technological convergence, there is no equivalent unanimity as to which core

technical element must be privileged as being responsible for the fusion of the advanced

technological fields currently underway (e.g. computer simulation has been pointed out as the

vehicle of convergence that one of the principal types, I, bequeaths to all four, yet this is not

unanimously accepted). This lack of accord is further exacerbated by mixing the core technical

element responsible for a certain sort of unification with a corresponding human or social goal that

is supposed to be served by it (e.g. B+C convergence may be privileged with a view to directly

enhancing the human mind). What is more, depending on which technological subtypes are being

considered each time, any two of these may yield a different type of such a core element as the

underlying unifier (e.g. using the structural format of the DNA as a more or less literal template for

new forms of computing).

It is therefore not simply or not only a matter of having the four principal types N B I C converging

into one: things get more complicated when the subfields are being intertwined or when one

subfield fused with another at the lower level impacts on two higher ones getting fused at a

particular juncture (e.g. bio-informatics). We must remember, too, that as things stand, experts in

converging technologies are actually scarce.

Therefore one crucial, and rather challenging, aspect of technological convergence is not so much

how it actually takes place in terms of the underlying engineering basis, but how it is and ought to be understood.

There is thus both an epistemological interest in trying to define technological convergence as well

as a normative one: how it is understood, i.e. starting from different premises or according to the

standpoint of the discipline one is employing as critical spotlight e.g. sociological analysis or moral philosophy or historical analysis of scientific practice (this is the point about epistemological

variability) as well as how it must be understood: i.e. what values, purposes, or ends each side to the

debate sets. The latter, the normative challenge, is the one in which most of the differences

separating the US from the European vision are concentrated.

However, the normative challenge comprises both questions of social goals as central to how

modern technology should be evaluated (e.g. whether specified human rights are violated when

certain technical advances are advertized as applicable to humans) but also questions about what

constitutes convergence as such (i.e. issues less directly identified with moral concerns). Mixing the

kinds of questions in this manner affects the way technical advances are seen as impacting on

society, since as we shall see in the following two Sections embracing specific areas of technological convergence is not as practically innocuous or as innocently beneficial as it might

look at the outset: it may involve re-defining essential human characteristics (cf. 'intelligence') or re-


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allocating values erstwhile deserved for human subjects (cf. 'dignity').

So how we conceive technological convergence combines both an epistemological and a normative

dimension that seem to interact beyond the merely palpable practical benefits of this or that

technical breakthrough. It involves crucial re-definitions of key notions, both within its technical

perimeter and outside it, i.e. both techno-scientific concepts but also social and ethical ones of

central importance, such as e.g. what counts as 'life' or 'real'. This is why social policy matters:

deciding on what counts as a technical fusion involves shifting corresponding conceptual barriers

and initiating new conceptual interconnections altering irremediably the familiar technical

geography, which in its turn, leads to a new moral landscape.

Finally, the debate ranges over how far the phenomenon is absolutely new or whether some of its

vestiges may be seen to be found in earlier aspirations of modern science at its inception (see e.g.

the emblematic Baconian vision of interfering with nature by technically interrogating it, or

medieval and renaissance ground projects of mimicking nature, attitudes one sees as being

resurrected in current technological convergence e.g. biomemetics or nanotechnology simulating cell self-replication). Others however see in this contemporary phenomenon a radically new

paradigm (in Thomas Kuhn's classic terminology). That is, the result of a new paradigm shift that

has moved science and technology from their erstwhile separation into pure and applied scientific reason, or a separation into soft and hard science, to a radically new mode through a fusion of the two, called technoscience, responsible for the inevitable technical convergence. It is no accident that in the words of some of its strongest promoters, these new technologies are called

"Threshold Technologies" and technological convergence in general is described in laudable words

such as the "New Renaissance".

Recent literature in the sociology of scientific knowledge and STS (Science and Technology

Studies) started investigating technological convergence in earnest offering concrete case-studies

informed by theoretical analysis as well as increasingly more sophisticated and nuanced

conceptions of the whole phenomenon [see Innovation 2009]. Such studies have shown, among

other things, that convergence must also be seen against alternative forms of scientific change (such

as divergence and emergence) or that it may assume different forms: see e.g. Kastenhofer on

convergence as cooperation of scientific fields, as integration of individual experts, groups or

institutions and as cultural assimilation and, also, on the role of alternative notions such as that of

epistemic cultures that must be grafted on convergence, showing how the epistemic culture of a technological field determines the type of technical knowledge it constructs. Others (Beckert et al)

have shown that the concept of convergence is not explicitly utilized in various technical fields even though it is in fact happening while there is a varying degree of distance between visions and

reality in different technical fields, and that, what is more, in the field where most of convergence

takes place, that of brain enhancement, the gap between vision and reality is greatest.

II. History and Definitions

The historical point of origin regarding the meaning of converging technologies is conventionally located in a 2001 US workshop at the National Science Foundation (NSF), organized together with

the Department of Commerce, that resulted in a report now considered an initial landmark: the Roco

and Bainbridge Report of 2002 (taking its name from its two editors).

This 2002 report proved to be quite influential at least in the USA in terms of its conceptual or terminological impact no less than in terms of setting the tone by means of the layout of its contents

and the labeling used therein: Themes-Statements-Visionary Projects. The use of the term converging technology consolidated in its particular NBIC sense adumbrated by the report after its publication in 2002 thus eliminating any other senses admittedly still inchoate at that time


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that the phrase used to have prior to that date. The term refers to the synergistic combination, at the most fundamental level, of four major "NBIC" areas of sciences and technology in conjunction with systems approaches, mathematics, and computation: (N) nanoscience and nanotechnology, molecular manufacturing and nano self-assembling; (B) biosciences, biotechnology, biomedicine,

proteomics, structural biology, integrative biology, genomics and genetic engineering; (I)

information technology, encompassing advanced computing and communications as well as (strong

and weak) artificial intelligence (AI), and networks.; and, (C) cognitive science and cognitive

neuroscience. Just trying to place neural networks, for instance, under any one of these subdivisions

rather than another is fraught with difficulties reminding us of the pervasive nature of technological

convergence.

"Standing on the threshold of a new renaissance" as far as science an technology are concerned, is

how the Report evaluates enthusiastically the current (and near-future hoped-for) state of affairs that

enables us to understand just about everything: the natural world, human society and scientific

research as closely coupled, complex, hierarchical systems - the so-called NBIC tetrahedron,. The manifesto is encapsulated in the phrase: "the sciences have reached a watershed at which they

must combine in order to advance more rapidly". The envisaged unity of science goes against the traditional epistemological separation effected by philosopher, scientist and mathematician Ren Descartes in the 17

th century between the science of nature and the science of mind as stemming

from the substantive distinction of their respective subjects: in a NBIC vision this separation is to be

abandoned.

The Report states in a memorable phrase: . . . if the Cognitive Scientists can think it, the Nano people can build it, the Bio people can implement it, and the IT people can monitor and control it In particular, manipulating materials at the atomic level is regarded as he primary vehicle, thus

enhancing the role of nanotechnology as of paramount importance. Nanotechnology is considered

by the NBIC promoters as a general purpose technology [The integration and synergy of the four technologies originate from the nanoscale, where the building blocks of matter are established] - or as the primary enabling vehicle, according to other authors, replacing IT (information technology) which used to occupy such a central position in previous decades.

However, subsequent developments proved that the 2002 NSF Report's definitions, despite their

initial influence, can no longer be the only ones, or that they appear superficial. Different ways of

understanding convergence began to appear in official reports and academic journals, such variation

showing that no single formal definition is universally accepted. One item of divergence can be

found in some EU reports proposing replacing the phrase converging technologies [CT] by Converging technologies for the European Knowledge Society [CTEKS]

On some views the four technologies are understood as disciplines converging either by losing their

differences or simply by means of synergy, but also, by contrast, as converging towards a common

set of goals informing a shared agenda amongst them, rather than as converging on technical

method or subject matter. In the latter case, agenda-driven technological convergence privileges the

criterion of agenda as the principal unifier; yet even this type itself can be ambiguous between a

sense of agenda as defined in terms of social or public policy imperatives (either yielding individual

or social benefits as set goals) or as defined in terms of purely technoscientific aims (that is, for the

sake of the advancement of tools as such) though in most cases there is no clear distinction between the two senses of agenda.

Moreover, convergence via a shared method does not construe method as merely running through

all of the technological fields as a sort of common thread but as something that assumes pride of

place this time the method is the substantive element. This has important repercussions for a more profound understanding of convergence pointing to deep conceptual issues we started with,


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reinforcing the sense of radical urgency and immense social significance converging technologies

have.

In particular, it has been pointed out that by means of scientific language a process of lending

concepts from one technical discipline to another can take place as e.g. is the case with the concept of information now spanning almost all fields. But transplanting terms does not happen without the terms themselves getting altered. In such a case, what is crucial is that a concept such as

e.g. 'information' migrating to another technical field (from Info to Bio) does not retain a

metaphorical sense any more. This has the result of evolving the pattern of what is considered as the

kernel of a concept and, consequently, shifts what its literal vs. its metaphorical use ends up being.

It is no longer evident or clear-cut which discipline lends to which, since concepts may have their

meaning shifted as a result of acquiring their core sense from the science that was initially on the

receiving end of confluence e.g. 'life' (from Bio to Info or Cogno).

This has as a major effect, too, on the repatriation of concepts in a changed form or, what is more

significant, the effect of changing fortunes of the meaning of 'real' as opposed to 'virtual'. For

instance, the latter is the case with so-called Ambiance Intelligence (AmI for short, including,

according to a certain description multi-sensoriality, multi-modality, multi-lingualism, virtual and augmented reality, telepresence, wearable devices, HMD and microdisplays, 3D displays etc.) Here is an eloquent image of this [EU R 26/7/2004, p. 17]: As we wander around, our bubbles will interact with the smart environment. Sensors, communication, storage and processing devices will

be everywhere. This is called pervasive ICT, pervasive not only by physical ubiquity, but also

because the technology will enter every area of our lives. This digital air notionally has the

information (and algorithms) suspended in it, waiting for us to pass through that air-space before

allowing us to access the information.

In this future-envisioned state of things our physical environment is actually transformed into a

cyberspace, impregnated by numerous software, and containing all sorts of Info and Cogno gadgets

in a non-conspicuous/non-material mode, ready to serve us. In this scenario cyberspace is no longer

anchored to a PC-hardware, but envelops us through and through, thus shifting the meaning of what

is 'real' and what 'mere appearance', or observable vs. unobservable, lifting the meaning-barriers between the 'natural' vs. 'artificial'.

Alternative, more inclusive, proposals stemming from Europe, expand the NBIC tetrahedron into a

circular structure including nodes neglected by the US vision symbolized in the form of a cyclical

return: Nano-Bio-Imfo-Cogno-Socio-Anthro-Philo-Geo-Eco-Urbo-Orbo-Macro-Micro-Nano and onwards (see Nordmann).

III. Social and other Challenges

It comes as no surprise that social, political, military, moral, health, psychological, environmental,

and religious concerns regarding the use of advanced techno-convergence are of pressing

importance. It must be remembered that converging technologies are classified as dual research schemes, research being directed to both military and civilian uses. Technological convergence

advances at an unprecedented rapid pace, and although initially a matter of technical progress

originating in the advanced economies of the West only, it nevertheless has clearly international

consequences, too, immediate (e.g. military technology) or otherwise, transcending traditional

national sovereignty. It has a global political impact governments must reckon with.

It also raises usual fears of 'playing God' associated with total human enhancement and

transhumanism. Fearful reactions of this sort, or less religious ones apprehensive of possible loss of


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personal privacy, have found plenty to worry about in the 2002 US vision advocating humanity would become like a single, distributed and interconnected brain ... This will be an enhancement to the productivity and independence of individuals, giving them greater opportunities to achieve

personal goals

One major difference between the US and the European Community's more recent engagement with

this subject, is that European critics are dissatisfied with the libertarian, individualistic, and

positivist focus they claim characterizes the US vision, as opposed to their own more socially

sensitive approach adumbrated in relevant official documents (see bibliography). The former

concentrates on the biological enhancement of the individual human being deploying direct

interventionism, while the latter highlights societal benefits and recommends a less invasive

deployment. European values promoted in various EU Reports and Parliamentary documents

include, equality and justice, respect to access opportunities, enhance individuals capabilities to learn and engage socially and politically. Europe posits its balance of linguistic and cultural

diversity with social homogeneity as a model to be followed in policies regarding technologies.

Connected to this is the difference between an American stance being obviously pro-active ('we

must act now and forge ahead with technological convergence') and a European one following a

rather precautionary route ('we must foreground the inherent risk and uncertainties that may issue in

irreversible damage'). Interfering with one's own germline thus affecting ones own descendants justified simply as permissible by a liberal polity and free market economy raises further moral

concerns. European attitudes also contrast by privileging what they call global conscience while in addition include socio-ethical debates on the marketable use of an advanced technological product:

e.g. should a high-tech artificial hands market be extended to military uses or be limited to strictly health care markets of non-tradable goods?

The NSF Report appears boldly confident of a comprehensive array of benefits to be accrued:

Expanding human cognition and communication highest priority being given to The Human Cognome Project, a multidisciplinary effort to understand the structure, functions, and potential enhancement of the human mind, Improving human health and physical capabilities, Enhancing group and societal outcomes, Strengthen national defense and Unifying science and education with a radical transformation of science education from elementary school through post- graduate training. Other examples include improving work efficiency and learning, enhancing individual sensory and cognitive capabilities, revolutionary changes in healthcare,

improving both individual and group creativity, highly effective communication techniques

including brain to brain interaction, perfecting human-machine interfaces including neuro-morphic

engineering, enhancing human capabilities for defense purposes, reaching sustainable development

using NBIC tools, and ameliorating the physical and cognitive decline that is common to the aging

mind. Some of these issues are not without their economic impact: e.g. handling aging minds technologically can positively affect state-run insurance schemes on the verge of collapse.

Critics point out that the underlying conceptions of what counts as 'innovation' and 'creativity' in all

this must be seen in a more subtle manner as not involving simply linear rationality models but,

rather, complexity, uncertainty and contingency characteristic of technological innovation that is

converging. Furthermore, these new complex forms of innovation must be subject to an equally

subtle ethical and political critique as well as to public regulatory policies of comparable

sophistication.

SEE ALSO: Epistemology of Nanotechnology, Technoscience


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BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bainbridge, W S & Roco, M C, (eds.) Managing Nano-Bio-Info-Cogno Innovations, Heidelberg,

Springer, 2006

Bainbridge, W S & Roco, M C, Progress in Convergence: Technologies for Human Wellbeing, in Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1093, No 2, ix-xiv.

Beckert, B et al Visions and Realities in Converging Technologies: Exploring the Technology Base of Convergence, Innovation: The European Journal of Social Science Research, 20/4, 2007, 375-394.

ETAG [European Technology Assessment Group] Technology Assessment on Converging

Technologies (IP/A/STOA/SC/2005-183) The European Parliament, 2006.

EU Foresighting the New Technology Wave Expert Group State of the Art Reviews and Related Papers, The European Communities 14 June 2004

EU Converging Technologies and the Natural, Social and Cultural World - Special Interest Group

Report for the European Commission via an Expert Group on Foresighting the New Technology

Wave Rapporteur and Editor: W. Bibel/ 26 July 2004

Grunwald, A., Converging Technologies: Visions, increased contingencies of the Conditio Humana and Search for Orientation, Features, 39/4, 2007, 380-392

Greenpeace Environmental Trust, Future Technologies, Todays Choices, Rapporteur, A H Arnall, Imperial College, London, July 2003.

HLEG Report Converging Technologies-Shaping the Future of European Societies, Rapporteur A

Nordmann/ 2004

INNOVATION-The European Journal of Social Science Research Special Issue on Knowledge Politics and Converging Technologies, 22/1, March 2009

ISTAG Scenarios for Ambient Intelligence in 2010 Final Report Rapporteurs Ducatel, K et al,

Seville, February 2001 www.cordis.lu/ist/istag.htm

Roco, M C & Bainbridge, W S., (eds.) Converging Technologies for Improving Human

Performance NBIC NSF/DOC-sponsored report National Science Foundation, Arlington, Virginia

June 2002

Sixth Framework Programme: Knowledge Politics and New Converging Technologies: A Social

Science Perspective CIT6 No. 028334 KNOWLEDGE NBIC , Specific Support Action CIT 6 D1 - Research trajectories and institutional settings of new converging technologies (WP 1) Project 2006-2009/Rappporteur S Fuller


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Byron Kaldis

General Editor SAGE Encyclopedia of Philosophy and the Social Sciences

Professor of Philosophy

The Hellenic Open University

[email protected]

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