Converging Technologies

Conceptualizing Convergence

The 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 [Page 126]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 can come about unless a corresponding internal interconnection is presupposed as a necessary requirement. Examples abound: combining biotechnology with information technology is required along with nanotechnology to accomplish miniaturization of testing and diagnostic devices, that is, “lab-on-a-chip”; biomedical implants in biotechnology must use devices made by information technology, as do high-tech novelties like “active skin”; tools made by “weak artificial intelligence (AI)” (that model some, but not all, aspects of human behavior) help us detect credit-card frauds. Nanotechnology must combine with telecommunications to create quantum wells or quantum dots.

However, nanotchnology, being a recent development that is still in the making, as well as a matter almost exclusively debated in 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 evolving practically as a result of new technical developments and interchanges of results, tools, and methods from one subfield of technical research to another, but it is also evolving conceptually as a result of being the subject matter of reports that more often than not act as manifestoes shaping the field. Consequently, nanotchnology's potential societal impact, how much the general public knows about it, or in what manner it is portrayed, all vary significantly. Policy recommendations are no exception to this variability. The more advanced technologies converge, therefore, the more divergent the conceptions concerning this process prove to be.

Protean Form

This protean form is both the result of what is actually taking place at the level of technological practice itself, being a constantly evolving field comprising more than a single technological domain (N-B-I-C, plus their numerous intertwined sub fields), 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 (1) different ways in which technological convergence has been promoted on each side of the Atlantic, thus issuing in a major divide between U.S. and European conceptions of it; and (2) distinct core elements on which technological convergence is said to hinge specifically—nanotechnology being one such proposed unifier.

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