Converging Technologies, Shifting Boundaries

At the beginning of the 21 century, most people are no longer surprised by technological revolutions. The twentieth century brought us information technology and biotechnology: key technologies for pioneering innovations such as the computer, the Internet and genetically modified plants. In the transition to the twenty-first century, two other important developments: nanotechnology (the research and design of materials at the smallest level possible) and cognitive science came along too. But that will not be the end of it if we are to believe the National Science Foundation (NSF). At the end of 2002, Roco and Bainbridge, the organizers of the workshop ‘Converging Technologies: Improving Human Performance’ did not just announce the next revolution in science and technology, but a whole new era, a New Renaissance [4]. In their view, the boundaries between nanotechnology, biotechnology, information technology and the cognitive sciences (NBIC) will disappear and this will open up the way for an unprecedented holistic concept of what it means to be human, ranging from the way the tiniest components in our cells interrelate to the way we think and feel. In the twenty-first century, according to their prophecy, human beings will be able to improve themselves radically. In this trend to convergence, two characteristics keep recurring: informatization and miniaturization. Numerous processes, whether they take place in the organic world, the inorganic world, or in the world of cognition, are nowadays described in terms of obtaining, providing, processing and providing feedback on information. As a result, previously incompatible elements can now be connected to one another. Genes and other cell components contain a ‘code’ that can be ‘cracked’ and ‘read’ by biosensors; information from our minds can be ‘loaded into a computer’ and vice versa; persuasive technology controls our behaviour by confronting our brains with certain information; synthetic biology is conceivable because in the future we ourselves will combine and alter the information stored in genes so that we can steer organisms in a direction determined by us. Secondly, converging technologies are founded on a far-reaching miniaturization of devices that has been made possible by the nanosciences and nanotechnology. These enable us to create contact points between brains and computers, between substances in our bloodstream and ‘wet sensors’, between someone’s clothing and his or her intelligent living environment. It also means that we can put together cells from biological building blocks. Nanoproducts, such as minuscule electrodes and Radio Frequency IDentification (RFID) chips, are crucial for the explosive growth in information exchange and feedback too. Nanoethics (2009) 3:213–216 DOI 10.1007/s11569-009-0075-x