Mihail C. Roco - Böcker

This text describes the vast opportunity created by unifying science and integrating technology, and recommends transforming ideas for individuals and society. We stand at the threshold of a new renaissance in knowledge based on the structure and behaviour of matter from the nanoscale up to the most complex system yet discovered, the human brain. Unification of science based on unity in nature and its holistic investigation should lead to technological convergence and a more efficient societal structure for reaching human goals. In the early decades of the twenty-first century, concentrated effort can bring together nanotechnology, biotechnology, information technology, and new humane technologies based in cognitive science. With proper attention to ethical issues and societal needs, rapid advances in convergent technologies have the potential to enhance both human performance and productivity.Examples of payoffs include improving work efficiency and learning, enhancing individual sensory and cognitive capabilities, revolutionary changes in healthcare, improving both individual and group efficiency, highly effective communication techniques including brain to brain interaction, perfecting human-machine interfaces, enhancing human capabilities for defense purposes, reaching sustainable development using NBIC tools, and ameliorating the physical and cognitive decline that is common to the ageing mind.

Continued economic growth, human welfare, and national security depend upon constant technological progress; and the chief area for innovation in the coming years will be converging technologies, the synergistic combination of the "NBIC" fields: nanotechnology, biotechnology, information technology, and new technologies based in cognitive science. The significance of convergence was initially recognized in the first National Science Foundation conference on the societal implications of nanotechnology in 2000, which reported that the newly developed ability to measure, manipulate, and organize matter on the nanoscale was revolutionizing science and technology.This volume will mark a major step forward, for three reasons: (1) Enough is understood about convergence now to permit serious consideration of governance issues and the likely human consequences. (2) Among the many convergence-related research projects, several in diverse areas have begun to deliver real results. (3) The network of NBIC researchers and analysts has developed to the point of being a real scientific and engineering community.One cross-cutting theme will be the ethical, legal, and social consequences of technological convergence. Another is the hunt for areas of remarkable research opportunities and the transforming tools required to take maximum advantage of them.Convergence will bring new approaches to what are currently diverse areas of research, such as converging technology platforms, physical and mental performance, human-machine interfaces, human cognition and communication, education and training, work efficiency, and many others. On their own, each of the NBIC technologies offers the potential for extraordinary advancement, but combined their potential is enormous and may provide revolutionary progress in human longevity, quality of life, learning, and productivity.NOTE: Annals volumes are available for sale as individual books or as a journal. For information on institutional journal subscriptions, please visit www.blackwellpublishing.com/nyas.ACADEMY MEMBERS: Please contact the New York Academy of Sciences directly to place your order (www.nyas.org). Members of the New York Academy of Science receive full-text access to the Annals online and discounts on print volumes. Please visit http://www.nyas.org/MemberCenter/Join.aspx for more information about becoming a member

This volume aims to document the most important worldwide accomplishments in converging knowledge and technology, including converging platforms, methods of convergence, societal implications, and governance in the last ten years.

Scientists and engineers have long been aware of the tension between narrow specialization and multidisciplinary cooperation, but now a major transformation is in process that will require technical fields to combine far more effectively than formerly in the service of human benefit. This handbook will catalog all the ways this can be accomplished and the reasons it must be. Nature is a single coherent system and diverse methods of scientific and engineering investigations should reflect this interlinked and dynamic unity. Accordingly, general concepts and ideas should be developed systematically in interdependence, with cause-and-effect pathways, for improved outcomes in knowledge, technology and applications. At the same time, industrial and social applications rely on integration of disciplines and unification of knowledge. Thus, convergence is both a fundamental principle of nature and a timely opportunity for human progress. This handbook will represent the culmination of fifteenyears of workshops, conferences and publications that initially explored the connections between nanotechnology, biotechnology, information technology and new technologies based on cognitive science. A constant emphasis on human benefit then drew in the social sciences, even as shared scientific and ethical principles brought in sustainability of the Earth environment and the challenge of equitable economic advancement. The intellectual contributions of literally hundreds of scientists and engineers established a number of research methods and analytical principles that could unite disparate fields. The culmination has been called Convergence of Knowledge and Technology for the benefit of Society (CKTS), defined as the escalating and transformative interactions among seemingly different disciplines, technologies, communities and domains of human activity to achieve mutual compatibility, synergism and integration.

This volume aims to document the most important worldwide accomplishments in converging knowledge and technology, including converging platforms, methods of convergence, societal implications, and governance in the last ten years.

This book describes the vast opportunity created by unifying science and integrating technology, and recommends transforming ideas for individuals and society. We stand at the threshold of a new renaissance in knowledge based on the structure and behavior of matter from the nanoscale up to the most complex system yet discovered, the human brain. Unification of science based on unity in nature and its holistic investigation will lead to technological convergence and a more efficient societal structure for reaching human goals. In the early decades of the twenty-first century, concentrated effort can bring together nanotechnology, biotechnology, information technology, and new humane technologies based in cognitive science. With proper attention to ethical issues and societal needs, rapid advances in convergent technologies have the potential to enhance both human performance and productivity.Examples of payoffs will include improving work efficiency and learning, enhancing individual sensory and cognitive capabilities, revolutionary changes in healthcare, improving both individual and group efficiency, highly effective communication techniques including brain to brain interaction, perfecting human-machine interfaces, 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. This is the first book addressing the convergence of technologies in coherence with social sciences, with a focus on people. Science and technology will increasingly dominate the world, as population, resource exploitation, and potential social conflict grow. Therefore, the success of this convergent technologies priority area is seen as crucial to the future of humanity.

This volume presents a comprehensive perspective on the global scientific, technological, and societal impact of nanotechnology since 2000, and explores the opportunities and research directions in the next decade to 2020.