Posts tagged as:

Emerging Technology

Why we need technology ratchets

March 7, 2010

A lot of things keep me up at night – everything from the trivial (“did I remember to brush my teeth?”) to the to the profound (“does it matter?” ).  But recently, I’ve been plagued more than usual in the wee small hours by the challenge of developing sustainable and resilient technologies.
Blame it on reading [...]

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Getting from A to B: Technology innovation, global challenges and the Davos process

January 29, 2010

There’s been something of a theme running through my day at The World Economic Forum Meeting in Davos today – getting from A to B.  The “A” in this case is technology innovation, and the “B” the problems we hope it will solve – the big ones like world hunger and disease, as well as [...]

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Owning the carbon cycle

January 28, 2010

This evening I was invited to talk to a group of industry leaders on alternative solutions to the “carbon” problem at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in Davos.  The brief was to be one of three “firestarters” – a bit of a dangerous one if you ask me.  Given the informal setting (this was [...]

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Davos 2010 – first impressions

January 27, 2010

Having just got back to the hotel at some unseemly hour (at least according to my body clock) from the first full day of meetings at the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, I’m trying my best to be disciplined and write some of my impressions up.  As it’s late, I’ll be brief:

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Davos 2010 – Got the mittens, where’s the snow?

January 26, 2010

I‘m sitting here at Dulles Airport waiting for my flight to Zurich and the annual World Economic Forum Meeting in Davos, so I thought I’d dash off a quick blog.  If you’re on the ball, you will realize that by arriving tomorrow, I will be missing most of the first day of the meeting.  This [...]

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From Davos with love

January 24, 2010

This week I’m heading out to the World Economic Forum jamboree in Davos, Switzerland.  I’d like to play this cool – as if rubbing shoulders with politicians, business leaders and celebs is something I do all the time.  But the reality is that this is my first time to what is probably the biggest annual [...]

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No Small Matter – a taste of the nanoscale

January 18, 2010

To accompany the review just posted of Felice Frankel and George Whitesides’ book “No Small Matter: Science on the Nanoscale” the authors kindly allowed me to post this series of excerpts.  What I wanted to capture here was the synergy between the images and the prose – and how together they pull the reader in.

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No Small Matter – A connoisseur’s guide to delicate work

January 18, 2010

How do you write a book about something few people have heard off, and less seem interested in?  The answer, it seems, is to write about something else.
Felice Frankel and George Whitesides have clearly taken this lesson to heart. Judged by the cover alone, their new book “No Small Matter:  Science at the Nanoscale” is [...]

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Ten emerging technology trends to watch over the next decade

December 25, 2009

Ten years ago at the close of the 20th century, people the world over were obsessing about the millennium bug – an unanticipated glitch arising from an earlier technology.  I wonder how clear it was then that, despite this storm in what turned out to be a rather small teacup, the following decade would see [...]

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Reversing the Technological Dilemma

December 17, 2009

By George Kimbrell, International Center for Technology Assessment, and the Center for Food Safety

A guest blog in the Alternative Perspectives on Technology Innovation series
Andrew asked us to write about “how technological innovation should contribute to life in the 21st century.”  Technological innovation is often blindly referred to as “progress.”  The question is — progress towards [...]

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Ecology and Nanotechnology

December 17, 2009

By Richard Worthington, Loka Institute

A guest blog in the Alternative Perspectives on Technology Innovation series
My first scholarly engagement with environmental politics was an honor’s thesis written while I was an undergraduate at Berkeley in the early 1970s.  Back then, the term “environmentalist” was frequently deployed to profile someone held to be a naïve, irresponsible and [...]

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Innovation for a well-fed world – what role for technology?

December 15, 2009

By Geoff Tansey
A guest blog in the Alternative Perspectives on Technology Innovation series
Andrew posed the question, “How should technology innovation contribute to life in the 21st century?”
For me, working on creating a well-fed world, the short answer is: in a way that supports a diverse, fair and sustainable food system in which everyone, everywhere can [...]

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Beyond safety: some bigger questions about new technologies

December 15, 2009

By Georgia Miller, Friends of the Earth Australia
A guest blog in the Alternative Perspectives on Technology Innovation series
The promise that a given new technology will deliver environmentally benign electricity too cheap to meter, end hunger and poverty, or cure disease is very seductive. That is why the claims are made with many emerging technologies – [...]

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Innovation for whom? Innovation for what? The Impact of Ableism

December 14, 2009

By Gregor Wolbring

A guest blog in the Alternative Perspectives on Technology Innovation series
First let me thank Andrew for inviting me to write a piece for his blog. Andrew states that his blog is about “how technology innovation should contribute to living in the 21st century” and about “providing a clear perspective on developing science and [...]

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Biopolitics for the 21st Century

December 14, 2009

By Marcy Darnovsky, PhD, Associate Executive Director of the Center for Genetics and Society
A guest blog in the Alternative Perspectives on Technology Innovation series
Much appreciation is due to Andrew for his courage in soliciting “alternative perspectives” on technology innovation and life in the 21st century.  I can’t help but observe that his nervousness about doing [...]

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Hooked on tech – ten alternative perspectives on technology innovation

December 10, 2009

2020 Science is something of a labor of love – it’s a website where I explore my thoughts and ideas surrounding the interface between science, technology and society beyond the constraints of my “day job” (currently Chief Science Advisor to the Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies at the Woodrow Wilson Center).  I like to think I [...]

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Science and Technology Innovation – looking to the future

December 9, 2009

The final part of a series on rethinking science and technology for the 21st century
Nine months ago, I embarked on an ambitious project to flesh out the ideas presented in a seminar given at the James Martin 21st Century School at the University of Oxford.  The seminar was titled ““Rethinking science and technology innovation: A [...]

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Completing the circle: Coupling science & technology outputs to inputs

December 7, 2009

Part 9 of a series on rethinking science and technology for the 21st century
Writing about completing the circle of science and technology policy at the start of the Copenhagen climate summit seems particularly fitting.  Although the climate change context was far from my mind when I started this series, it stands as a stark reminder [...]

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What’s technology innovation got to do with it? Final thoughts on the Summit on the Global Agenda

November 22, 2009

As this weekend’s Summit on the Global Agenda came to a close this morning, I was left with an abiding impression of a looming yet largely hidden potential crisis in global security and prosperity: A failure to develop and use technology innovation effectively in serving the growing needs of society.
The summit set out to address [...]

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Serendipity at the Summit on the Global Agenda

November 21, 2009

Good brainstorms are oft anticipated and rarely encountered.  So I tend to get a little excited when I find myself in one that stimulates rather than stultifies.
Today at the World Economic Forum Summit on the Global Agenda had more than it’s fair share of frustrations – including what I can only describe as a masterful [...]

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From the Summit on the Global Agenda: Technology innovation as an enabler of social innovation

November 20, 2009

It’s the end of day one at the World Economic Forum Summit on the Global Agenda, and I’m sitting in my rather comfortable hotel room overlooking Palm Island, trying to pull my thoughts together. It was a day for meeting old friends, making new acquaintances, listening to stirring speeches and exploring new challenges.  As you [...]

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Rethinking the world – World Economic Forum style

November 19, 2009

For the next three days I will be participating in and blogging from the World Economic Forum Summit on the Global Agenda in Dubai.  If last year’s summit – described as the “World’s largest brainstorming” – is anything to go by, we’re in for an intense few days.  The summit draws on the WEF’s Global [...]

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Culture Clash – the biopolitics of popular culture

November 10, 2009

This is a first for 2020 Science – a plug for a meeting which I have nothing to do with!  But next month’s seminar on the Biopolitics of Popular Culture being run by the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies (IEET) looks so intriguing that I couldn’t resist! (that, and a heads-up from IEET Managing [...]

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Risk Innovation… You what?! (Desparately seeking advice!)

October 23, 2009

Here’s something I’ve been chewing over for the past few weeks:  How do you capture succinctly the idea of developing innovative new approaches to identifying, assessing, managing and otherwise dealing with risks to human health?
What I’ve ended up with is “Risk Innovation” – but I’m not convinced it works.
So I thought I would see if [...]

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Riding the wave: Rethinking science & technology policy

October 15, 2009

Part 8 of a series on rethinking science and technology for the 21st century
Much to my embarrassment, I’ve just realized that it was over four months ago that I wrote the previous blog in this series – a series that was supposed to evolve over just a few weeks!  Most inconveniently, other priorities ended up [...]

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So you’re curious about nanotechnology…

September 28, 2009

Curious, concerned or just plain confused about nanotechnology?  The new website Nano & Me might be just what you are looking for.

Funded in part by the UK department of Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) and developed by the Responsible Nano Forum, Nano & Me is aimed at providing clear and balanced information on an emerging [...]

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