Managing nano-bio-info-cogno innovations: Converging technologies in society
Abstract
Tremendous human progress is becoming possible through the development of converging technologies stimulated by advances in four core fields: Nanotechnology, Biotechnology Information technology, and new technologies based in Cognitive science (NBIC). This book provides a unique review of technical developments related to the unification that is rapidly taking place today among these fields. It assesses potential for revolutionary applications of these developments and their likely impact in improving the human condition. The essays included in the book offer a wide variety of scholarly views on the likely societal impacts and policy implications of these developments and applications, including assessments of educational, economic, commercial, legal, ethical, political, and social implications. This is the third in a series of such volumes on converging technologies edited by Drs. Roco and Bainbridge, the first of which is also available from Springer. © 2006 to the complete printed work by Springer. All Rights Reserved.
Chapters (19)
This introductory chapter briefly defines the "NBIC" unification that is rapidly taking place today among Nanotechnology, Biotechnology, Information technology, and Cognitive science. It then describes how the other chapters address the potential impacts of converging technologies, considers how innovation can be stimulated and steered, and provides a basis for an understanding of the societal implications of NBIC.
After a brief overview of the general implications of converging new technologies, this chapter focuses on its effects on research and development (R&D) policies and business models as part of changing social relationships. These R&D policies will have implications on investments in research and industry, with the main goal of taking advantage of the transformative development of NBIC. Development of converging technologies must be done with respect for immediate concerns (privacy, toxicity of new materials, unified nomenclature, etc.) and longer-term concerns including human integrity, dignity, and welfare. The efficient introduction and development of converging new technologies will require new organizations and business models, as well as solutions for preparing the economy, such as multifunctional research facilities and integrative technology platforms.
The scope of converging technologies is so broad that we must define manageable sub-areas to apply roadmapping methods to under-standing and plotting a future direction. This chapter describes a road map structure and some key elements of the structure and provides some examples that will help in steering towards meaningful convergence roadmaps.
Nano-Bio-IT-Cogno (NBIC) convergence offers both challenges and opportunities for the future of science, industry, and society. NBIC convergent technologies represent a new integrated framework for considering not just how science might be conceptualized but also how socioeconomics might be viewed differently. NBIC convergence is further evidence of an emerging Innovation Economy, where innovation tools, systems, products, and services become the dominant basis for commerce. Economic opportunities generated by NBIC may also improve quality-of-life factors in society. This chapter considers some of the evolving policy, business, and science implications of NBIC as we grapple with the vexing challenges associated with this Innovation Economy. In addition, as-yet- unresolved critical areas of concern - such as access to sustainable energy and health care, both of which are essential to quality of life, business and U.S. global leadership - may be furthered by NBIC convergence. Although NBIC is in the early stages of discovery, relevance of this new holistic model for solving global problems is appealing. The NBIC model holds significant promise in shaping the future development of human potential and fostering appropriate human enhancement. The hope is that NBIC may effectively accelerate the resolution of grand challenges that confront us today and as we move into the 21st century. Forecasting the Future of NBIC How should we consider the future of NBIC? Are the innovations that will extend life and health and increase performance part of a new era of human enhancement? Can we discover new sources of energy to improve the quality of life for all? Can industry look to NBIC inventions to accelerate productivity and commerce? The promise is large, and the potential is unlimited. Forecasting the future of NBIC is a daunting challenge, but here is a collection of innovations that may come to pass as we unlock this potential:
This chapter describes some of the key indicators and metrics that support the conjecture of convergence. It first provides a general description of what is meant by converging technologies, then points toward some specific examples indicating that this convergence is already beginning to occur. Indicators that can be used to detail how the process of convergence occurs are government spending, university programs, inter-firm strategic alliances, intra-firm technological expansion, and patent citations. The chapter concludes with policy recommendations.
Interdisciplinary collaboration of the sort required by convergent technologies, which will have to include ethics and social sciences as well as multiple fields of physical science and engineering, raises incommensurabilities to pursue goals that promise social as well as technological progress. Even cultures with very different perspectives can trade, and from such trades, deeper understandings can grow - if participants in the trading zone exercise moral imagination. In order to shape converging technologies, students need to be taught not only disciplinary depth but also the ability to become interactional experts who can facilitate trades across disciplinary cultures. The chapter concludes with a list of techniques for encouraging and monitoring the development of this kind of interactional expertise, including a simulation that puts students in the role of policy- makers.
In this chapter, we show how Hofstede's cultural constructs help explain the dysfunction we observed in the early history of the George E. Brown, Jr., Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation (NEES), a large-scale deployment of cyberinfrastructure intended to link 16 experimental facilities around the United States. The NEES project involved participants from three distinct professional cultures: civil engineering, computer science, and program managers at the U.S. National Science Foundation. Using Hofestede's categories, we demonstrate how mis communication arose from orthogonal orientations on Hofstede's dimensions. In particular, we found that variation in attitudes toward risk led to conflict, with the more risk-averse civil engineers and program managers frequently aligned against the more risk-tolerant computer scientists. In the discussion, we consider successful techniques for accommodating differences in professional cultures and offer a set of lessons learned based on experience with the NEES project.
The challenge we face today in creating technologies for the developing world is not in having great ideas, but in being flexible and dedicated enough to make sure that some version of a technology insight actually gets adopted by people in developing countries. Success requires the heroic efforts of passionate people who act very effectively upon their passion. This chapter considers what such technology entrepreneurs have already accomplished and what they are ready to accomplish in the short- term and longer-term future. Examples cover a wide range of converging technologies, across infotech, nanotech, biotech, and cognotech. The essay urges scientists, engineers, and entrepreneurs to work together passionately, using the power of converging technologies to move forward, to keep our humanity alive, to help the world to live, grow, and adapt.
This chapter reviews many of the ways that nanotechnology may impact human health. Nanotechnology may provide new diagnostic and therapeutic techniques for intervention with environmental disorders, developmental diseases, and degenerative diseases. The chapter considers the opportunities likely to arise over short-term, mid-term, and long-term time scales. It also recognizes the technical challenges of using nanomaterials for biology and medicine and their possible adverse consequences. It concludes with a brief description of the Center for Biological Nanotechnology, which is pioneering in this area, and offers a vision of the future.
This chapter describes an NBIC project that is supported through an Office of Naval Research Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative grant. This project presents an example illustrating the synergies emerging from the convergence of nanotechnology, biotechnology, information technology, and cognitive science. Next-generation CNN (Cellular Neural/Nonlinear Network) visual computers will be enhanced by nanoscale sensors, biologically-inspired circuitry, and new, wave-type computing principles. These new generations of systems will have the performance necessary for real-time applications in real-world environments, and they will aid human cognition.
In response to recent developments in neuropharmacology, some are asking what the potential impact of memory drugs might be in relation to common values and social justice; others are concerned with legal and military implications, including possible requirements or prohibitions of enhancement pharmaceuticals in the workplace. In considering these drugs, society must weigh what the collective benefits or costs might be in relation to individual rights and choices. This chapter addresses the neuroethics of memory drugs by taking stock of differing rhetorics and values in personal and collective memory. Following an overview of current "memory and forgetting" drug development, this chapter asserts the idea that cultural shifts in how we relate to history in general, and to our own stories or memories in particular, can open up approaches to scientific knowledge that carry ethical social advantages. As changes in memory management, both technological and pharmacological, come into play, freedom of thought remains a democratic good and an essential human value that can guide coming debates over the uses and applications of cognitive technologies.
A historical model of techno-economic change with socio- political adjustments is used to illuminate how neurotechnology will influence human society in the next three decades. The impact of neurotechnology in the financial sector is discussed with an overview of how the European Union and the United States are responding to the political and ethical issues that arise from advanced neurotechnology. The development of neurotechnology, tools that analyze and influence the nervous systems, is being accelerated by the convergence of NBIC technologies and will create new leading neurotech clusters.
This chapter explains the basic cognitive modeling approach to managing complexity in information technology. It begins with an overview of cognitive modeling and then discusses three directions in which cognitive modeling has influenced information technology: improving existing user interfaces to information technology, evaluating new ways in which information technology can be tailored to user needs, and pointing toward novel paradigms for interacting with information.
Over the course of history, cognitive technologies have been implicated in religious debates and have been retarded by the lack of proper cognitive science and information technology. Today, information technology permits the development of many new cognitive technologies, assisted when appropriate by biotechnology and nanotechnology. Two illustrative applications are 1) an artificial intelligence personal advisor, and 2) dynamic lifetime information preservation systems. Of necessity, cognitive technologies are often more personal than other kinds of technologies, and thus they require a shift in the focus of cognitive science to give greater emphasis to the understanding of each unique individual and his or her intimate social context.
In 1776, Adam Smith argued that specialization of labor increases productive capacity. Over the past 228 years, as markets expanded and new industries were established, there was indeed a dramatic increase in labor specialization. We do not believe this drive toward specialization is slowing down. Nevertheless, we argue that processes of scientific- technological convergence and technology-business coevolution naturally and periodically give rise to the need for specialists who are deep at the intersections of richly interconnected disciplines. Thus, paradoxically, one generation's generalists may become the next generation's specialists. In particular, we describe an emerging services science discipline and profession that lies at an area of rich interconnection among existing disciplines. We argue that a services science will help us improve our ability to rapidly develop and deploy well-designed, effective, and valuable capabilities in today's information services economy. Services science aims to understand ways to rapidly increase productive capacity by accelerating the successful deployment of new technologies and improved capabilities, such as those brought about by NBIC technology convergence. Our speculative discussion of the emergence of services science begins to explore the opportunity of matching social-organizational progress rates with technological progress rates.
New ethical issues arise in the convergence of nanotechnology, biomedicine, information technology, and cognitive science (NBIC). This chapter considers the ethical issues associated with two central features of the NBIC initiative: the accelerating rate of development, and the goal of enhancing human performance. Traditionally, ethical reflection has come only after research and development, and the application of innovations was slow enough that the discussion could be far advanced before their full impact had been felt, but the rapidity of NBIC progress will require ethical reflection at all steps in the process. Many critics and ethicists argue that technology should only return humans to "natural" levels of functioning, rather than give them new or greater capabilities. The Convergence Movement may need to address enhancement directly and make the case for why it could be an ethical goal. The chapter ends with a closing remark on the convergence of the sciences with the humanities.
The political terrain of the 20th century was shaped by the economic issues of taxation, labor, and social welfare and the cultural issues of race, nationalism, gender, and civil liberties. The political terrain of the 21st century will add a new dimension - technopolitics. At one end of the technopolitical spectrum are the technoconservatives, defending "human dignity" and the environment from technological progress. On the other end of the spectrum are the technoprogressives, holders of the Enlightenment faith that scientific and technological progress is liberating. Some of the key points of conflict in the emerging technopolitical struggle are the bioethical debates over human enhancement technologies. Technoprogressives such as "transhumanists" advocate for the right to use technologies that transcend human limitations, whereas technoconservatives argue for a strict limit on the nontherapeutic uses of biomedicine. Technopolitics has cut across the existing political lines and created odd coalitions between left-wing and right-wing technoconservatives on one side and technolibertarians and technodemocrats on the other. Future technopolitical debates are suggested that will force further technopolitical polarization.
The thesis of this chapter is that future technological change has the potential to radically change society, and social science along with it. Among the major technologies considered herein are information, energy, bio-, and nanotechnologies. In combination, these technologies could lead to widespread self-sufficiency, which could call into question the application of numerous standard economic theories and models. Information technology could allow the establishment of non-spatial governments, both at national and subnational levels, which could roil the world of political theorists. In combination, the technologies could lead to changes in the sources of people's identities, which in turn could pose threats to psychological health and give rise to a new group of technology-driven psychological illnesses. Last, the technologies, combined with changes in economic and political systems, could give rise to new cultures and a new, virtual cultural landscape across the planet. Use of traditional social science variables may become obsolete, to be replaced by new variables more in tune with new social realities. It is argued that social scientists will have to become more proactive in their approach to their discipline if they are to provide guidance to societies during times of rapid technologically driven change. 1
... As the world approaches the first anniversary of the Covid-19 pandemic, biology, chemistry, physics and other traditional disciplines in the natural sciences converge in the concept of technoscience and the transdisciplinary 'nano-bio-info-cogno' paradigm (Bainbridge & Roco, 2006). Social sciences and humanities explore emerging concepts such as biodigital philosophy, postdigital knowledge ecologies (Peters et al., 2021b), bioeconomy (Peters et al., 2021a), viral modernity (Peters et al., 2020) and others. ...
... This discussion of concepts and terms brings about our second theme: convergence. After decades of experience we are already well-used to 'low-level' convergences such as biophysics and technoscience, yet their mutual combinations and 'higherlevel' convergences such as 'nano-bio-info-cogno' (Bainbridge & Roco, 2006) still leave us baffled. How do we make sense of something, which is at the same time everything else? ...
... MP: Thanks, Petar for reminding us of these leading research works. I guess my emphasis has been on the concept of technological convergence outlined in a couple of papers focusing on the US National Science Foundation and the way in which the Foundation has funded research on the 'nano-bio-info-cogno' paradigm as developed by Bainbridge and Roco (2006). It is certainly the case that NSF believe that the 'cognosciences' (and therefore education) has lagged behind and this has motivated heavy investment in the learning sciences including biologically inspired learning systems, affect technologies, computational theory and cognitive modelling, spatial intelligence and temporal dynamics by the US National Science Foundation (Peters, 2020c). ...
This dialogue (trilogue) is an attempt to critically discuss the technoscientific convergence that is taking place with biodigital technologies in the postdigital condition. In this discussion, Sarah Hayes, Petar Jandrić and Michael A. Peters examine the nature of the convergences, their applications for bioeconomic sustainability and associated ecopedagogies. The dialogue paper raises issues of definition and places the technological convergence (‘nano-bio-info-cogno’) – of new systems biology and digital technologies at the nano level – in an evolutionary context to speculate, on the basis of the latest research, future possibilities. The paper also reviews these developments within familiar landscapes of posthumanism and postmodernism, raises the question of political bioeconomy and the role of postdigital education within it.
... and what is radical, disruptive or incremental in emerging convergent technologies and the so-called convergent innovation (Bainbridge & Roco, 2006), symbiotic innovation (Thomas & Wind, 2013) and co-innovation (Lee et al., 2012), which have given rise to a new type of innovation: Responsible Innovation (Sutcliffe, 2011;Owen et al., 2013). (Schumpeter, 1934) systemic, important/major, minor, incremental, unrecorded (Freeman, 1974) niche creation, architectural, regular, revolutionary (Abernathy & Clark, 1985) autonomous, administrative, systemic (Teece, 1984) ancillary, technological, administrative (Damanpour, 1987) incremental innovation, radical innovation, new technology systems, changes in techno-economic paradigms (Freeman & Perez, 1988) incremental, modular, architectural, radical (Henderson & Clark, 1990) Degree of change (technical/technological) has been extensively discussed through the introduction of technological trajectories (Nelson & Winter, 1982), new technological systems and the concept of "constellations" of innovations, which includes numerous radical and incremental innovations in both products and processes. ...
... The impressive grow of collaborative innovation 18 between a range of actors, including users, universities, firms, and governments calls into question the role of firms as the central actor in the innovation process, also noticed in the modifications introduced in the latest edition of the Oslo Manual (2018). Narrowly connected with collaborative innovation is a movement around "convergent innovation" (nano, bio, cogno and emergent technologies), symbiotic innovation and the fast expansion of blockchain innovation together associated debates on Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI), which are posing new challenges to innovation studies (Bainbridge & Roco, 2006;Depledge et al., 2010;Martin, 2016). Many contemporary innovation incumbents bring to the fore the need to debate different implications on aspects related to the impact of this new "technology revolution" with regard to asymmetries and fragility of knowledge sharing, intellectual property and patents, funding mechanisms and governance of the "commons" (Gächter et al., 2010;Filitz et al., 2015;Potts, 2018). ...
In a few decades a myriad of innovation forms has been emerging as a ubiquitous imperative of contemporary society addressing the fast pace of scientific and technological development and pressing global challenges. Innovation has been characterised as ‘technological’, ‘social’, ‘cultural’, ‘inclusive’, ‘environmental’, ‘open’, ‘user-centred’, ‘lean’, ‘free’, and ‘responsible’, among others. This chapter overviews current innovation landscapes and future trends, exploring underpinning mechanisms and theoretical cornerstones that may explain this huge variety. The study provides a semantic map of around one hundred innovation types introduced from 1950 to 2019, analyzing relationships between stablished forms and new incumbents. In particular, it shows how the nature of innovation has evolved over time through the creation of recognized and un-recognized kinds of innovation, including detached and the so-called hidden and dark innovations, which bring to the fore issues on the possibility of a univocal definition of innovation.
... In 2017, we analyzed the main directions and trends in the scientific and technological development of the world and considered the issues of information support by a modern scientific journal [1]. We were shown to live at the turnover of two paradigms crucial for the future of humanity, namely: the 6th technological wave [2][3][4] and the 4.0 industry [5,6]. Understanding and vision of the trends of future technical and technological development should be reflected in specific "pieces of information". ...
The Ukrainian journal Semiconductor Physics, Quantum Electronics and Optoelectronics (SPQEO) was launched in 1998 artificially combining three main areas of scientific activity inherent to the V. Lashkaryov Institute of Semiconductor Physics of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, namely semiconductor physics, quantum electronics and optoelectronics. After a decade this artificial base turned into some kind of organic symbiosis, namely: (i) the main optoelectronic systems are based on semiconductor devices, for example, fiber-optic networks; (ii) semiconductor lasers dominate in a huge number of applications in quantum electronics; (iii) semiconductor physics proposes new types of LEDs with extremely high efficiency, and so on. This article is dedicated to the 25 th anniversary of SPQEO. According to the Google Scholar Citation statistics, above 1680 articles cited more than 7350 times in total were published in the journal from 1998 to 2023. The statistics of references of journal articles and the scientific areas of the most cited articles are presented.
... If we allow for future origins, it is only natural to conclude that the first impending of such events is the emergence of AI and the accompanying onset of postbiological evolution. It is immaterial for the present argument which of the many construals of postbiological is the best or even acceptable; as a placeholder, we may refer to the convergence of nanotechnology, biotechnology, information technology and cognitive science (NBIC) to improve human performance (e.g., Canton 2004;Bainbridge and Roco 2006). So, while specifics may vary, we may expect that the NBIC convergence describes satisfactorily well human/terrestrial approach to the postbiological era. ...
The advent of artificial intelligence (AI) systems has provoked a lot of discussions in both epistemological, bioethical and risk-analytic terms, much of it rather paranoid in nature. Unless one takes an extreme anthropocentric and chronocentric stance, this process can be safely regarded as part and parcel of the sciences of the origin. In this contribution, I would like to suggest that at least four different classes of arguments could be brought forth against the proposition that AI - either human-level or superintelligent - represents in itself a credible existential threat to humanity in either nearby or distant future. Part of the same argumentation is applicable to the general notion of postbiological evolution, which has caused even more unnecessary confusion and uproar in both laymen and philosophical circles. While the due attention should be given to the risks and dangers of the transitional period, there are many reasons why we should openly support and cheer for humanity's transition into the postbiological epoch.
... Indeed, since then, several large-scale neuroscientific endeavours have been established, partly encouraged by the growing attention to public mental health (WHO, 2001), the increasing scale of projects in life sciences (Vermeulen, 2010), the suggested links between the understanding of the brain and the emerging technologies (Bainbridge & Roco, 2006), and the development of information technology facilitating data sharing, which gave birth to Big Data analysis throughout the 20th century (Rieder, 2018). Notably, the RIKEN Institute in Japan in 1997, the Allen Institute for Brain Science in the US in 2003, the NeuroSpin in France in 2007 have been created, while large-scale projects have been launched, such as the Blue Brain Project in 2005, supported by the Swiss confederal government, and the Human Connectome Project of WU-Minn-Oxford consortium in 2009, including approximately 150 and 120 participants, respectively. ...
Au cours de la dernière décennie, plusieurs projets de recherche sur le cerveau à grande échelle ont été lancés par différents gouvernements. Cette «vague des Big Neurosciences» remet en question le cadre théorique de la circulation du modèle politique puisqu’aucun modèle spécifique n’est identifiable. Pour appréhender cette «vague», cet article mène une étude comparative (Union européenne, États-Unis, Corée du Sud) en s’appuyant sur la notion de la vision itinérante et de l’imaginaire sociotechnique. L’étude démontre que (1) la vision itinérante des Big Neurosciences a inspiré les acteurs locaux et les a encouragés à élaborer des projets à grande échelle; (2) la vision des Big Neurosciences a été interprétée différemment par les acteurs locaux et reformulée tout au long de la négociation avec les institutions intégrant des imaginaires particuliers, ce qui a entraîné des projets à grande échelle divergents dans chaque cas. Les résultats suggèrent que la vision itinérante et la vague des Big Neurosciences ont renforcé le « solutionnisme » technologique et les imaginaires dominants existants, ce qui nuirait à la démocratie en permettant à leurs promoteurs de contourner les débats sociaux inclusifs.
... Nowadays, due to the international presences that companies have, it is a common practice to find alliances and collaboration that allow companies to stand out from the competitors. Then, for manufacturing firms to cope with their dynamic production and aim for covering the market demands [4], they have been testing for different technological alternatives to improve multiple areas of the business model [5]. This takes place at different levels often involving the industry-academia duo. ...
Novel practices in the formation of students are encouraged to be multidisciplinary which in fact, allows them to better understand the behaviour of systems. This skill allows them to identify existing needs that impact multiple areas, both for an organization and to complement their entrepreneurial training. In this work, there is exposed a reference framework that arose to aid in the innovative design process among the manufacturing sector, it seeks to stretch the gap between conceptualization and implementation for engineering projects. Furthermore, the formation of the learners is enriched due to the breakdown of complex systems into entities as it gathers existing knowledge and provides structure to systematize the development process, allocate problems and provide feedback. Thus, design stages are detailed, engineering stages are described and a toolbox is presented to guide designers into their task. The methodology has been tested under multidisciplinary projects in different time lapses, observing a positive impact in the formation of participants, as it guarantees the inclusion of desired attributes, documentation and milestones in the scenario being developed. In this article, there are described three case studies. Findings when developing using the methodology shows a structural, documented process followed by the designers, capable of recognizing the abilities acquired and reinforced skills, documented entities corresponding to what is developed at the end of the projects and time of deployment is enhanced.
... Nowadays, due to the international presences that companies have, it is a common practice to find alliances and collaboration that allow companies to stand out from the competitors. Then, for manufacturing firms to cope with their dynamic production and aim for covering the market demands (Bainbridge & Roco, 2006), they have been testing for different technological alternatives to improve multiple areas of the business model (Weichhart, Molina, Chen, Whitman, & Vernadat, 2016). This takes place at different levels often involving the industryacademia duo. ...
Novel practices in the formation of students are encouraged to be multidisciplinary which in fact, allows them to better understand the behaviour of systems. This skill allows them to identify existing needs that impact multiple areas, both for an organization and to complement their entrepreneurial training. In this work, there is exposed a reference framework that arose to aid in the innovative design process among the manufacturing sector, it seeks to stretch the gap between conceptualization and implementation for engineering projects. Furthermore, the formation of the learners is enriched due to the breakdown of complex systems into entities as it gathers existing knowledge and provides structure to systematize the development process, allocate problems and provide feedback. Thus, design stages are detailed, engineering stages are described, and a toolbox is presented to guide designers into their task. The methodology has been tested under multidisciplinary projects in different time lapses, observing a positive impact in the formation of participants, as it guarantees the inclusion of desired attributes, documentation and milestones in the scenario being developed. In this article, there are described three case studies. Findings when developing using the methodology shows a structural, documented process followed by the designers, capable of recognizing the abilities acquired and reinforced skills, documented entities corresponding to what is developed at the end of the projects and time of deployment is enhanced.
... Note, that the introduction of digitalization in various spheres of society causes heated disputes among scientists. Thus, the philosophical understanding of this process is today one of the most relevant areas of study of the problems and prospects of IT technologies, considered in the context of NBIC convergence [1,12,13]. ...
Digitalization provides new opportunities for determining the path of sustainable development of agricultural and ecological systems. The article attempts to consider the problems related to the emerging digital divide and the possibility of their leveling accompanying this process both at the international and national levels. Digital transformation is taking place not only in the technology sector and digital companies: its scale extends to all areas of the world economy. It was revealed that digital transformation, accompanied by the development of digital platforms, provides a more complete interaction of agricultural ecosystems with the digital world. Digital platforms have been identified to facilitate the integration of business, social and technological processes that form digital service ecosystems. The main reason for the expansion of the digital segment of agricultural ecosystems is the increase in the transactional sector. The creation of IT platforms based on the digitalization of production and technological processes, jobs; logistics, collaboration of agribusiness entities and public-private partners, consumers, competitors, investors, authorities has been proposed.
... Благодаря ряду обстоятельств биосемиотика может занять ключевое место в НБИК-конвергенции (конвергенции нанотехнологии, биотехнологии, информационной технологии и когнитивной технологии [Алексеева, Аршинов, Чеклецов, 2013; Ковальчук, 2011; Ковальчук, Нарайкин, Яцишина, 2013], на что было обращено внимание впервые в 2005 г. [Bainbridge, Roco, 2005]). ...
Говоря о становлении семиотически осознаваемой биологии, важно не создавать календарный план преобразований, а рассмотреть точки бифуркации, которые при этом будут пройдены. Принципиальным является то, что такое становление предполагает признание знаковости, а значит и смысла, в живых организмах. Это может реализовываться через реинтерпретацию синтетической теории эволюции в категориях теории информации, разработку биосемиотики на основе семиотик Ч.С. Пирса и Ф. де Соссюра или разработку представления о биологическом смысле (например, в биогерменевтике). Любой вариант семиотического осознания биологии в явном виде делает семантику предметом естествознания, что является переворотом в нем впервые после декларированного радикального преодоления антропоморфизма в XIX в. Такой переворот радикально меняет не только сферу познания, но и технологии, благодаря осознанию существования широкого класса семиотических биотехнологий, что может оказать сильное влияние на НБИК-конвергенцию. В результате рефлексии ситуации и конкуренции биотехнологий может сложиться баланс биогерменевтики, биофилологии, биолингвистики, биосемиотики и биопрагмалингвистики как вариантов семиотически осознанной биологии.
... Early postdigital theorists such as Kim Cascone, and mainstream responses to the Covid-19 pandemic, are still predominantly focused to the digital-analog side of the definition (Cascone and Jandrić 2021;). Yet studies of the relationships between biology, information, and society have closely followed the development of various bioinformational, technoscientific, and other convergences (Bainbridge and Roco 2006;Williamson 2019), and the Covid-19 pandemic has caused a rapid growth of research in the field (Johnson et al. 2020;Pickersgill 2020). ...
... However, recent researches support the previous understanding that "how nanotechnology is developed and commercialized" (Gupta, Fischer, Lans, & Frewer, 2012) depends heavily on the perception and attitude of society towards its acceptance. While Bainbridge and Roco (2003) asserted that unless technological convergence takes place with social realms "it is hard to see how humanity can avoid conflicts, such as those that marred the 20 th Century, caused by limited resources for available technology and social differences within each country and across." Analysis of public response to any new technology suggests that the success rate of that technology (such as genetically modified food, nuclear power) or product (such as mobile phones) relies on its societal acceptance (Frewer et al. 2004(Frewer et al. , 2011a; Van Kleef, Fischer, Khan, &Frewer2010). ...
... Naturally, the development of the sixth technological mode is not limited to additive technologies. The synthesis of nano-, bio-, information and cognitive technologies (the so-called NBIC convergence, i.e., unification of nanotechnology, biotechnology, information technologies and cognitive science) also shows a lot of promise [42]. Lately, NBIC has grown to include social sciences and transformed into NBICS [43]. ...
The development of the modern technological revolution and evidence of a deepening civilization crisis make us pose the question about the prospects of the social and economic transformation of the modern society under the influence of certain factors. S. Bodrunov approaches the resolution of this problem from the historical perspective on public development. He relies on methodology of the classical political economy and considers changes in the material basis of production as the main drivers of upcoming changes. Technological shifts lead to changes in the content of human activity and opportunities for the satisfaction of human wants. They also result in a gradual removal of humans from immediate production and cause shifts in the entire social structure. The author shows that the next stage in the development of the modern civilization will be the formation of a new type of public order–the New Industrial Society of the Second Generation (NIS.2), which stipulates gradual creation of prerequisites for transitioning from the economy to the noonomy. The noonomy constitutes a non-economic way of satisfying humans’ reasonable wants. It will serve as the material foundation for forming and ensuring the functionality of the noosociety. The article determines that humanitarian culture as a timeless value exerts crucial influence on the positive development of transformation processes considered under the theory of noonomy.
... Students form ideas about the types of interdisciplinary connections between mathematics (geometry) and other disciplines, the ability to apply them in solving problems, and increase their motivation and enhance their educational and cognitive activities. In studies on convergent, information-cognitive technologies, it is noted that the basis of the new system of organisation of science and education is interdisciplinarity (Bainbridge & Roco, 2005). ...
This chapter introduces a teaching collaboration practice with students of the National University of Education in Ecuador who will become early childhood teachers. It is the aim of this experience to design provocative educational environments within university classrooms to inform emancipatory practices in teacher training. In doing so, students are encouraged to think on their own learning practices as an emancipatory source for developing a culture of collaboration, participation and critical thinking. In this light, classes described across the chapter show the didactic strategy of educational provocation as a teaching method that allows for mentorship, formative assessment and the active participation of apprentices. Against this background, the methodological approach is based on the inspiring experience of Reggio Emilia to elaborate on provocations’ didactics and the concept of the environment as a third teacher. Then, it is debated whether there is an emancipatory potential in creating provocative educational environments that mediate the pedagogic relations among teachers, students, content and the world of children.
This publication examines the complex economic dimensions of artificial intelligence safety investment through the lens of market failure theory and explores potential policy responses to address identified inefficiencies. As artificial intelligence technologies advance beyond narrow applications toward more general capabilities, questions regarding safety measures and their economic underpinnings become increasingly salient. This work, situated in the technological landscape of 2012, provides a forward-looking analysis of the economic challenges that may constrain optimal investment in AI safety research and implementation.
The first chapter establishes a theoretical framework for conceptualizing AI safety as an economic problem, identifying characteristics such as public good provisioning, information asymmetries, and externalities that create market inefficiencies. Drawing parallels with established domains such as nuclear safety and biotechnology governance, we demonstrate how AI safety presents both familiar and novel economic challenges that warrant systematic analysis.
Chapter two provides a detailed examination of specific market failures impeding adequate investment in AI safety measures. We analyze how coordination problems, competitive dynamics, knowledge spillovers, and limited liability frameworks create structural barriers to safety investment, even when such investment would be socially optimal. Through case studies of early machine learning applications in automated trading, recommendation systems, and autonomous vehicle research, we illustrate how these market failures manifest in practice.
The third chapter presents a comprehensive evaluation of potential policy interventions to address identified market failures. We assess direct funding mechanisms, tax incentives, prize competitions, public-private partnerships, and regulatory frameworks according to criteria of economic efficiency, implementation feasibility, and technological appropriateness. Special attention is given to balancing innovation incentives with precautionary principles in the context of early-stage transformative technologies.
Our final chapter synthesizes these analyses into an integrated economic framework for sustainable AI safety investment. We propose institutional arrangements, funding models, and metrics that could support long-term safety considerations in AI development. Additionally, we outline a research agenda for the economics of AI safety that anticipates increasing technical capabilities and identifies key questions requiring further investigation in the coming decade.
This publication contributes to the nascent literature on AI economics by rigorously applying established economic principles to emerging safety challenges, while acknowledging the significant uncertainties inherent in transformative technological development. Our analysis suggests that proactive economic policy design for AI safety is both possible and necessary, even at this relatively early stage of artificial intelligence development.
The concept of Industry 6.0 is considered as a qualitatively new phase of industrial and socio-economic development, characterized by comprehensive intellectual and technological immersive hyperconnectivity and physical-cognitive-emotional fusion of virtual twins of man and machine within the framework of symbiotic interaction. The methodology of Industry 6.0 is disclosed through a comprehensive system of views on the essence, content, core, object, goals, distinctive technologies of Industry 6.0, covering the entire spectrum of processes of creation, implementation and development of emotional-intellectual cybersocial meta-ecosystems obtained on the basis of ChIME convergence (ChIME means “Chelovek” (“man”) – “Iskusstvennyi sverkhintellekt” (“artificial superintelligence”) – “metaekosistema” (“meta-ecosystem”)). By analogy with genetic algorithms (where inheritance, mutation, selection, crossing over, etc. are used), the methodology and technology of DNA engineering of cybersocial metaecosystems include approaches of genetic engineering in an expanded synergetic, interdisciplinary format, which allows using the principles of convergent evolution and NBIC convergence. The toolkit for implementing Industry 6.0 includes the development of a periodic table of system-target elements of the polysystem tetrad of cybersocial metaecosystems (PTSTE-PTCM) (by analogy with the periodic table of chemical elements), generalized versions of polysystem proteins, amino acids and codons, as well as a cognitive genetic model of the polysystem genome in the form of a heterogeneous gene-neural network. The practice of deploying Industry 6.0 is demonstrated using the example of creating a test version of the “Polysystem Tetrad of the Cybersocial Metaecosystem of Industry 5.0/6.0” at “Techno Tube” LLC and during the development of the GН1G structure – a polysystem protein that ensures the research and technological development of the Starbase metaecosystem within the Starship HLS project. To prove the effectiveness of the polysystem protein GН1G, a model of economic coevolution of the Starbase metaecosystem was created, which showed high efficiency and significant scientific and technological potential of the presented tools. One of the directions of further research of the Industry 6.0 concept, which the authors would like to note, is the development of a table of analogies between the electron configurations of atoms of chemical elements and complexes of relations of the fundamental categorical cores of the system-target elements of the PTSTE-PTCM, especially configurations 6p, 1d and higher. The development of elements of these configurations will allow us to move on to the creation of anthropogenic systems.
The correlation of main levels of reality is presented using the MBIC (material, biologic, intelligent, cognitive) framework. An illustration of high dimensionality in reference architectures is presented. The diversifying and unifying methodology for science and engineering, for virtuality and reality is highlighted. The 8D Program manifesto, calls engineers, scientists, and entrepreneurs to identify and utilize observables, trends, mechanisms, and key issues concerning the emerging technology, industry and economy driving transition to higher dimension reference architectures and high complexity projects implementation.
In this chapter Grinin et al. describe the main technological changes within the historical process, show the general process of changes and to explain how and why technological epochs succeeded each other. The chapter introduces two interconnected theories: the ones of Production (or technological) Revolutions and of Production Principles. The authors single out four production principles: 1. Hunter-Gatherer; 2. Craft-Agrarian; 3. Trade-Industrial; 4. Scientific-Cybernetic. The change in production principles is connected with production revolutions. Among all major technological breakthroughs in history the most important are the three production revolutions: 1) the Agrarian Revolution (10–3 millennia BCE); 2) the Industrial Revolution (the 16th–19th centuries) and 3) the Cybernetic Revolution (1950 – up to 2070). The first phase of the Cybernetic Revolution took place between the 1950s and mid-1990s with a vigorous development of information technologies. The final phase of the Cybernetic Revolution may begin approximately between the 2030s and 2040s and will finish in 2060–2070. It will usher the beginning of the epoch of ‘self-regulating systems’, which can be working without human control. The authors also offer some forecasts about the periods after the end of the Cybernetic Revolution up to the end of the 21st century.
According to the authors’ concept, the Cybernetic Revolution is the last of the major production (technological) revolutions in all history following the Agrarian and Industrial Revolutions. It is a major transition, from the Industrial Production Principle to production and service provision based on the implementation of self-regulating/self-managing systems. The first phase of this revolution began in the 1950s and 1960s and brought the development of powerful information technologies. Between the 2030s and the 2070s, the final phase of this revolution will lead to a new level of self-operated control, namely, to the level of self-regulating/self-managing systems, which can operate with no human intervention. Grinin et al. have described these systems in the previous chapter. In the present chapter, the authors study the main directions of the final phase of the Cybernetic Revolution, which will form a peculiar and closely related cluster of innovative directions for the development of technologies. This complex Grinin et al. call the MANBRIC complex/convergence. This is an acronym that includes medicine, additive (3D printers), nano- and biotechnologies, robotics, IT, and cognitive sciences., The authors show that a number of reasons medicine will be the first sphere to start the final phase of the Cybernetic Revolution.
This chapter examines technologies’ current and future development in the framework of the Cybernetic Revolution—the third of the largest production (or technological) revolutions after the Agrarian and Industrial ones. The Cybernetic Revolution is a fundamental transition from industrial production to the production of services and goods based on the widespread implementation of self-regulating systems, that is, systems that can function in the absence or with minimum involvement of people and independently make complex decisions. This transition has already started and will continue up to the 2070s. The Cybernetic Revolution began its active development in the 1950s and has now finished its modernization phase. At the moment, the key technologies are information and communication technology and artificial intelligence, whose role in society is gradually increasing, and they come with benefits and potential risks. However, Grinin & Grinin assume that from the 2030s, the new—final—phase of the Cybernetic Revolution will start. Its major technological breakthroughs will lead to self-regulating systems’ formation and widespread implementation. So, Grinin & Grinin assume that new technologies will emerge. They forecast that it will be a set of technological spheres, and the MANBRIC complex/convergence is taking shape and will actively develop in the final phase of the Cybernetic Revolution (in the 2030s–2070s). The MANBRIC is an abbreviation formed from the initial letters of the seven breakthrough areas: Medicine-Additive-Nano-Bio-Robotics-Info-Cognitive technologies. These technological fields closely interact and corroborate each other and will continue to do so increasingly in the future. Due to its specific characteristics, medicine will be an integral part of the MANBRIC complex. Grinin & Grinin also offer some scenarios for further technological development. They significantly depend on the areas where technological breakthroughs will start. The main developmental scenario is presented as a breakthrough that will occur in the 2030s in the field of medicine, especially at the nexus of its new directions and some areas of the MANBRIC. There will be the introduction of innovations based on self-regulating systems in various fields of social activity (economy, medicine, biology, and socio-administrative structures). Grinin & Grinin describe the most favorable scenario and recommend how to move toward this scenario.
Converging technologies require intelligent policy-making as they have significant capabilities to develop disruptive innovations. In this regard, future-oriented technology assessment is vital given the great uncertainty about the consequences of and barriers to accessing these technologies. However, few frameworks have been developed to evaluate converging technologies, and most of those have neglected the unique dimensions of these technologies. Therefore, this study aims to provide a policymaking framework for converging technology development. Accordingly, the proposed framework is designed through a meta-synthesis of previous technology assessment frameworks by considering the feasibility, challenges, and achievements of converging technologies development pathways (CTDPs) as the key factors. Then, the framework is implemented in a case study of Iran and an appropriate strategy for each converging technologies development pathway is proposed based on a quadruple matrix of achievements and challenges. The results show that in Iran, biotechnology and cognitive technologies have the highest and lowest development horizons, respectively; and surprisingly, the combined field of biotechnology-cognitive is the most promising pair combination of converging technologies.
In this paper, I investigate what common discourses National AI Strategies (NAISs) share and how they have unfolded differently in diverging national contexts. For this purpose, I compare the South Korean and French cases by relying on the notions of sociotechnical imaginary and future essentialism. I analyze (1) the emergence of the common discourses, which I call AI‐essentialism, over the past decade; (2) the development of imaginaries around IT in Korea and France in the twentieth century, namely technological developmentalism and the American challenge, respectively; and (3) the integration of the traveling AI‐essentialism and nationally embedded imaginaries of IT into each country's NAISs. The analysis indicates that: (1) AI‐essentialism incorporated discursive strategies, enabling political and industrial leaders to naturalize AI development, hence justifying increased investments in the field; (2) two countries' imaginaries of IT diverged due to the successes and failures throughout the second half of the twentieth century; and (3) while two countries' NAISs share AI‐essentialism's discursive instruments, their specific measures and unfolding have varied in relation to each case's existing imaginaries of IT.
Правові засади: укладення, зміни та виконання господарських договорів в Україні
Unlike other developed countries, the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) discourse has become the central element within technology governance in Korea. This paper examines the reasons for the discourse’s success and its political and social implications. Based on the analysis of policy documents and the media coverage, I argue that political and economic elites have actively introduced the 4IR discourse to create novel momentum for promoting Information and Communications Technology (ICT) and to justify deregulatory measures while re-enacting the developmentalist imaginary. I also highlight that the 4IR discourse’s promoters have drawn upon the dialectics between the desirable future and the nation’s shared fear to urge the Korean society to accept the measures privileging the industry as the means of making the nation a developed country and avoiding being colonized again.
New areas of interest for higher dimensional polytopic projects have been delineated. These refer to arts, architecture, transdisciplinarity, complex systems, and unity of sciences and engineering. Revealing 4D and 5D artistic creations are presented. The Historical Axis from Paris including the 4D Great Arch is considered as a Polytopic Roadmap. Polytopic Roadmaps and roads to higher dimensionality for different schools of Transdisciplinarity are evaluated. Complex systems presentation focuses on systems of systems of systems as a prospective developmental stage. Excluded Middle and Included Middle General Polytopic Roadmaps have been proposed as examples of a Polytopic Roadmaps for operators, engineers, researchers and entrepreneurs from various fields to synthesize their thinking and capabilities into new projects implementation to face and exceed complexity.
New technological ability is leading postdigital science, where biology as digital information, and digital information as biology, are now dialectically interconnected. In this chapter we firstly explore a philosophy of biodigitalism as a new paradigm closely linked to bioinformationalism. Both involve the mutual interaction and integration of information and biology, which leads us into discussion of biodigital convergence. As a unified ecosystem, this allows us to resolve problems that isolated disciplinary capabilities cannot, creating new knowledge ecologies within a constellation of technoscience. To illustrate our arrival at this historical flash point via several major epistemological shifts in the post-war period, we venture a tentative typology. The convergence between biology and information reconfigures all levels of theory and practice, and even critical reason itself now requires a biodigital interpretation oriented towards ecosystems and coordinated Earth systems. In this understanding, neither the digital humanities, the biohumanities, nor the posthumanities sit outside of biodigitalism. Instead, posthumanism is but one form of biodigitalism that mediates the biohumanities and the digital humanities, no longer preoccupied with the tradition of the subject, but with the constellation of forces shaping the future of human ontologies. This heralds a new biopolitics which brings the philosophy of race, class, gender, and intelligence, into a compelling dialog with genomics and information.KeywordsBiodigitalismBioinformationalismBiopoliticsPostdigitalConvergenceKnowledge ecologyTechnoscienceDigital humanitiesBiohumanitiesPosthumanismPhilosophyEpistemologyOntology
This chapter explores the co-incidence of Europe, US and China new green deal policies, together with the international cooperation of many nations, and argus that it seems like a promising intersection of national and global intentions. It introduces the scientific backdrop of these policies, and various biodigital convergences. Based on a range of policy documents, the chapter looks into the emergence of bioeconomy and describes its main features. The conclusion indicates that biodigital convergence and its various implications from biotechnology to bioeconomy seem to promise a Copernican shift in our current way of life. Historicizing this historical shift and comparing it to predictions of a similar magnitude were expected from other technologies, however, it advocates caution. The world is still not in the age of bioeconomy, yet the first signs of the new age of bioeconomy are all around us. Bioeconomy is of great importance for new green deal initiatives, and it is crucial to develop bioeconomy towards a new green age that at last takes sustainability seriously.KeywordsBiodigitalismBioinformationalismBiopoliticsBioeconomyPostdigitalConvergenceKnowledge ecologyTechnoscienceNew Green Deal
This chapter explores the connections between the bio and the digital in the construction of ‘bioinformation’ and ‘biodigital convergence’. The site of examination of these connections is medical understandings of the body. Its focus is the notion of ontology in two related senses, philosophical and technical. The chapter considers the connections between, on the one hand, the immaterial understanding reflected in medical knowledge—in philosophical terms ‘the ideal’ or ideational—and on the other, the material, biological realities of bodies. In a technical sense, the chapter discusses medical ontologies in a computer science frame of reference, and the emergence in recent years of ‘knowledge graphs’ for their representation. On these philosophical and technical bases, the chapter goes on to discuss a research and development project in which the authors have been engaged, to develop a web-based knowledge graphing environment, with a wide range of potential sites of applications, one to support medical students in clinical case analysis, and the other to build medical logic visualizations to supplement electronic health records.KeywordsKnowledge graphsOntologiesMedical informaticsMedical educationElectronic health records
This dialogue (trilogue) is an attempt to critically discuss the technoscientific convergence that is taking place with biodigital technologies in the postdigital condition. In this discussion, Sarah Hayes, Petar Jandrić and Michael A. Peters examine the nature of the convergences, their applications for bioeconomic sustainability and associated ecopedagogies. The dialogue chapter raises issues of definition and places the technological convergence (‘nano-bio-info-cogno’) – of new systems biology and digital technologies at the nano level – in an evolutionary context to speculate, on the basis of the latest research, future possibilities. The chapter also reviews these developments within familiar landscapes of posthumanism and postmodernism, raises the question of political bioeconomy and the role of postdigital education within it.KeywordsPostdigitalBiodigitalismBioinformationalismBiopoliticsBioeconomyConvergenceKnowledge ecologyTechnoscience
En este escrito el autor analiza y evalúa los factores que afectan la selección y la adopción de tecnologías emergentes, las cuales, por su naturaleza y sus campos de acción, se integran para configurar focos estratégicos de convergencia tecnológica. El artículo aborda el caso específico de las convergencias nano-bio e info-cogno, las cuales se analizan a partir de un estudio de vigilancia tecnológica. Los resultados obtenidos permiten proyectar un escenario de actuación para las convergencias tecnológicas en el cual se viabiliza un mapa de ruta para la consolidación de propuestas efectivas, a efectos de afrontar las problemáticas y atender las necesidades que se plantean desde las dimensiones económica, ecológica y social.
The article aims to show the potential of the synthesis of Kondratiev’s concept of long cycles (waves), the theory of production (technological) revolutions, and the concept of the leading sectors and technological orders. Based on these theories, the article analyzes the contemporary cybernetic revolution that started in the 1950s and puts forward a prediction that the final phase of the cybernetic revolution will begin in the 2030s and that this final phase will merge with the sixth Kondratiev wave. The basis of the sixth technological order will be the complex of the leading technologies MANBRIC — medicine, additive technologies, nanotechnologies, robotics, IT, and cognitive technologies. Most of the technologies within this complex will be self-governing systems. One more important factor considered in the analysis is the global population ageing, which will have a significant impact on the development of technologies in the final phase of the cybernetic revolution and the sixth technological order. Global aging will spur the advancement of medical science and related fields and make medicine the most important integrating component of the emergent MANBRIC complex. It can be predicted that the upcoming final phase of the cybernetic revolution will be accompanied by the disappearance of K-waves and slowing down of the technological progress.
The economic development of OECD countries in the past 50 years has been marked by a decline in the share of manufacturing and an increase in the share of the service sector in their national economies. This structural imbalance was one of the causes of the 2008–2009 crisis. Empirical data analysis for the leading OECD countries shows that the decline in the share of people employed in manufacturing has practically stabilized by 2020, while production volumes continue to grow. Information and communication technologies, which have already become general purpose technology, play an important role in this development trend. Based on the new role of ICT the work proposes a five-sector model of the economy (instead of a three-sector model), as it best reflects the technological trends of modern development. In particular, it is proposed to single out a separate sector related to human resources, which includes education, health care, social services and science. Another sector should be manufacturing, construction, transport, and mining, the development of which will largely depend on the use of ICT.
The digital transformation of economic systems has become an established trend. One piece of evidence for this is that some of the empirical laws formulated by N. Kaldor, which accompanied the process of long-term economic growth in the twentieth century, have ceased to act. Another feature of modern development is that digital technologies, having an intensive labor-saving property, which makes their use “toxic” for the labor market. This fact raises the importance of assessing the potential number of jobs, taking into account technological substitution under various scenarios of real wage formation. In close connection with such an assessment is the determination of the gross product and the level of decline in aggregate consumer demand caused by a reduction in the number of jobs and the increasing role of intelligent machines in the economy. For a more accurate description of the above features of modern economic development, we have proposed a set of economic growth models that take into account the new stylized facts of economic development formulated by J. Stiglitz and T. Piketty. The developed models are verified using the US statistics.
This article develops a post-determinist and a post-instrumentalist understanding of education and educational research through the lens of postdigital theory. We begin with historicizing current postdigital research by showing its intellectual ancestry and recognizing its rapidly changing nature. We move on to current state of the art, which we present in three wide themes. The first theme is the great convergence of various lower-level techno-scientific convergences, such as analogue–digital, physics–biology, and biology–information, which results in new epistemologies, ontologies and practices. The second theme is some consequences of the great convergence for education and pedagogy, which result in new postdigital ecopedagogies. The third theme is postdigital research, which is reconfigured by the great convergence towards a closer collaboration between traditional scientific fields and disciplines. We briefly outline four such reconfigurations (multidisciplinary, interdisciplinarity, transdisciplinarity, and antidisciplinarity) and their implications. The article concludes with a brief list of directions for future work in the field.
This paper explores a possible future of postdigital education in 2050 using the means of social science fiction. The first part of the paper introduces the shift from 20 th century primacy of physics to 21 st century primacy of biology with an accent to new postdigital–biodigital reconfigurations and challenges in and after the COVID-19 pandemic. The second part of the paper presents a fictional speech at the graduation ceremony of a fictional military academy in a fictional East Asian country in 2050. This fictional world is marked by global warfare and militarization, and addressed graduates are the first generation of artificially evolved graduates in human history. The third part of the paper interprets the fictional narrative, contextualizes it into educational challenges of today, and argues for a dialogical, humanistic conception of new postdigital education in a biotech future.
Interfacing the organic and synthetic worlds at the nanoscale level yields a new discipline known as nanobiotechnology, a subdiscipline of nanotechnology that involves nanomedicine and nanotoxicology and focuses on the phenomena, mechanisms and engineering of nanomaterials at the nanoparticle–biological (nano–bio) interface for both safe and adverse effects as well as health applications and biological purposes. A major goal of nanotechnology at the nano–bio interface is to exploit the properties of nanomaterials by gaining control of molecular structures at the atomic, molecular and nanoscale levels.
The issues of pathogenesis, manifestations, outcomes and prevention
of reproductive disorders (RD) in patients with metabolic syndrome
(MetS) studied. It was found that the main RD of men with MetS were
decreased testosterone levels, decreased sperm fertility and erectile
dysfunction. In women with MetS, metabolic disorders also lead to RD
such as infertility, menstrual irregularities, premature birth, births of
children with congenital anomalies. RD in patients with MetS can have
negative consequences for individuals as reduced quality of life,
depression and increasing metabolic disorders, and the countries as
depopulation. Normalization of basal metabolic rate by exercise and a
diet improves reproductive health in patients with MetS. However,
despite the proven positive impact of lifestyle adjustment, the search for
the best cures’ treatment for RD of patients with MetS remains open.
Keywords: metabolic syndrome, reproductive health, lifestyle
The article discusses the issues of creating software and tools for managing the processes of training specialists in an intellectual educational environment. The complex of tools is being developed as part of a hyper-converged computing ecosystem to support open personalized learning technologies and is designed to customize and adaptively update educational programs and content, taking into account the requirements of federal standards and regional labor markets. At the first stage, the tools solve the problems of searching, collecting, consolidating and intelligent analysis of requirements for specialists extracted from open sources on the Internet, such as sections with employers’ vacancies on the websites of enterprises, recruitment agencies, labor exchanges, message boards, forums, chats, groups of social networks and messengers. At the next stage, the process of adaptive adjustment and synchronization of educational programs is implemented, taking into account the consolidated information and predicted data on the required competencies in the short and medium term in a given region. Setting up the educational process in an open information environment occurs during the evolutionary transition to a convergent learning model, continuous updating of educational programs and content, personalization of training trajectories. The convergent model determines the convergence of educational programs and content for different specialties in accordance with the digitalization processes of all spheres of human life, which is reflected in the requirements for competencies in professional and educational standards, as well as on the part of employers. The processes of actualization and personalization make it possible to increase the efficiency and quality of training specialists by reducing the risks of obtaining a low-quality and morally obsolete education. The architecture of the adaptive management system of the educational environment includes the following components: a) Learning Management System (LMS), b) Education Content Management System (ECMS), c) Learning Activity Management System (LAMS), d) tools for searching, collecting and analyzing employers’ requirements, e) cloud storage of educational content.
In addition to industrial processes or factory automation, industrial revolutions have a broad spectrum of implications in domains such as economy, education, healthcare, agriculture, and society. Society progress follows industrial advancements. The initiative society 5.0 uses the technology as basis towards a human machine symbiosis throughout the society. Bio-Info-Nano-Cogno, BINC technologies are presented as significant participants to the society development. Cyber-Physical-Social Systems, CPSS implications for society have been discussed. Ecology based questions and potential answers for technology development are presented.
Appeals to ‘nature’ have historically led to normative claims about who is rendered valuable. These understandings elevate a universal, working body (read able-bodied, white, producing capital) that design and disability studies scholar Aimi Hamraie argues ‘has served as a template […] for centuries’ (2017: 20), becoming reified through our architectural, political, and technological infrastructures. Using the framing of the cyborg, we explore how contemporary assistive technologies have the potential to both reproduce and trouble such normative claims. The modern transhumanism movement imagines cyborg bodies as self-contained and invincible, championing assistive technologies that seek to assimilate disabled people towards ever-increasing standards of independent productivity and connecting worth with the body's capacity for labor. In contrast, disability justice communities see all bodies as inherently worthy and situated within a network of care-relationships. Rather than being invincible, the cripborg's relationship with technology is complicated by the ever-present functional and financial constraints of their assistive devices. Despite these lived experiences, the expertise and agency of disabled activist communities is rarely engaged throughout the design process. In this article, we use speculative design techniques to reimagine assistive technologies with members of disability communities, resulting in three fictional design proposals. The first is a manual for a malfunctioning exoskeleton, meant to fill in the gaps where corporate planned obsolescence and black-boxed design delimit repair and maintenance. The second is a zine instructing readers on how to build their own intimate prosthetics, emphasizing the need to design for pleasurable, embodied, and affective experience. The final design proposal is a city-owned fleet of assistive robots meant to push people in manual wheelchairs up hills or carry loads for elderly people, an example of an environmental adaptation which explores the problems of automating care. With and through these design concepts, we begin to explore assistive devices that center the values of disability communities, using design proposals to co-imagine versions of a more crip-centered future.
The world financial and economic crisis of 2008–2009 convincingly showed that the modern market economy is unstable, unbalanced, and it develops cyclically. The article discusses the dynamics of the digital economy, generated by the innovations of the NBIC technological and fourth industrial revolutions and forming the basis of the sixth Kondratiev Big Cycle (2018–2050). The digital economy solves the epochal task of moving from the mass production of standard goods to original goods that meet individual needs and preferences, which reflects current trends in demand. The article also examines the relationship between synergetics and the digital economy, since synergetics deals with unstable and nonequilibrium systems and focuses on nonlinear phenomena in economic evolution, such as structural changes, bifurcations, and chaos that will accompany the process of digital economy formation. In the era of the digital economy, capital markets are neither stable nor self-optimizing, and they need supervision and management. In this regard, the rethinking and new reading of the ideas of J. Keynes and H. Minsky on the role of the state in ensuring effective governance are extremely relevant.
This chapter addresses concerns that the development and proliferation of human enhancement technologies (HET) will be dehumanizing and a threat to our autonomy and sovereignty as individuals. The chapter argues contrarily that HET constitutes nothing less than one of the most effective foreseeable means of increasing the autonomy and sovereignty of individual members of society. Furthermore, it elaborates the position that the use of HET exemplifies—and indeed even intensifies—our most human capacity and faculty, namely the desire for increased self-determination, which is referred to as the will toward self-determination. Based upon this position, the chapter argues that the use of HET bears fundamental ontological continuity with the human condition in general and with the historically ubiquitous will toward self-determination in particular. HET will not be a dehumanizing force, but will rather serve to increase the very capacity that characterizes us as human more accurately than anything else.
The world is flat, hot and crowded but also it is connected [1]. The generalized use of technologies such as Internet, mobile technologies, cloud computing, big data analytics, cyber-physical systems, digital systems and sensors leads to a connected world. In this chapter, you will be able to understand the new challenges faced by a connected world supposed to be supported by intelligent system to enhance living standards of people around the planet.
New technological ability is leading postdigital science, where biology as digital information, and digital information as biology, are now dialectically interconnected. In this article we firstly explore a philosophy of biodigitalism as a new paradigm closely linked to bioinformationalism. Both involve the mutual interaction and integration of information and biology, which leads us into discussion of biodigital convergence. As a unified ecosystem, this allows us to resolve problems that isolated disciplinary capabilities cannot, creating new knowledge ecologies within a constellation of technoscience. To illustrate our arrival at this historical flash point via several major epistemological shifts in the post-war period, we venture a tentative typology. The convergence between biology and information reconfigures all levels of theory and practice, and even critical reason itself now requires a biodigital interpretation oriented towards ecosystems and coordinated Earth systems. In this understanding, neither the digital humanities, the biohumanities, nor the posthumanities sit outside of biodigitalism. Instead, posthumanism is but one form of biodigitalism that mediates the biohumanities and the digital humanities, no longer preoccupied with the tradition of the subject, but with the constellation of forces shaping the future of human ontologies. This heralds a new biopolitics which brings the philosophy of race, class, gender, and intelligence, into a compelling dialog with genomics and information.
This article is aimed at considering current sources of financing for high-tech projects. In the article, statistical data confirm the orientation of developed and developing countries' economies towards the generation of high-tech products by the dynamics of added value in high-tech and medium-high-tech industries, respectively - support for high-tech manufacturing enterprises and industries as a whole. Lists of high and medium-high-tech adopted sectors in the Russian Federation, in the United States, and in European nations, and a list of critical technologies are given. Special attention is given to the essence of the high-tech projects, concept, through the implementation of a rise in the share of high-tech products. The article identifies the main characteristics that distinguish a high-tech project from an innovative one. The dynamics of value-added in high-tech and medium-high-tech sectors of the economies of developing and developed countries are studied in conjunction with R & D spending in high-tech sectors of these countries. On the example of the United States (the global leader in the high-tech industry), the structure of financing high-tech projects carried out by companies at the expense of internal financing, that is, own funds is investigated. Based on the Russian Federation, the volumes of attracted cash in the form of grants and the amount of borrowed cash in the form of a subsidy for the implementation of high-tech projects in dynamics for 2012-2018 are investigated.
ResearchGate has not been able to resolve any references for this publication.