Elsevier

Futures

Volume 39, Issue 4, May 2007, Pages 380-392
Futures

Converging technologies: Visions, increased contingencies of the conditio humana, and search for orientation

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.futures.2006.08.001Get rights and content

Abstract

Scientific and technological progress broadens humanity's options and decreases its dependency on the given. With the increase in contingency in the conditio humana associated with it, however, not only new freedom of choice, but also problems of orientation arise. This shows itself at present clearly in the debate on Converging Technologies for Improving Human Performance, in which the nature of the human body and mind increasingly appear to be formable. In this contribution, I will investigate the role of communication of the future against this background. On the one hand, it plays the role of a medium through which the increase of contingency takes place. On the other, visionary communication is also used in order to provide new orientation in view of this increase of contingency. This succeeds only if certain prerequisites are met. The analysis of these prerequisites leads to the identification of requirements on methodical elaboration in the field of prospective analysis, in particular, of technology assessment.

Section snippets

The challenge—visions in the converging technologies debate

At present, “converging technologies” (CT) and nanotechnologies are the field meeting with a high degree of scientific and public attention [1], [2]. A lot of (partly very futuristic and far-ranging) visions are characterizing the debate, the idea of the “enhancement of human performance” being probably the most well-known one. Following the famous NSF report [1] on CT, a large and intensive debate about the interpretation of the main ideas of that report, about the future of humankind, about

The increase of contingency and the role of communication about the future

Scientific and technological progress leads to an increase of the options for human action. Whatever had been inaccessible to human intervention, whatever had to be accepted as uninfluenceable nature or as fate, becomes an object of technical manipulation or design. This is an increase of contingency in the conditio humana, a broadening of the choices possible among various options, and, with it, a diminution of human dependency on nature and on humanity's own traditions.

Emancipation from

CT improving human performance

New possibilities for human enhancement are expected from CT [1]. According to the model of NBIC-convergence, it is assumed that innovations from the technological and scientific fields of nanotechnology, bio- and genetic engineering, the information and communication technologies, as well as from the cognitive sciences, and brain research converge. This nano-bio-info-cogno-convergence (NBIC) is supposed to lead to revolutionary scientific discoveries and possibilities for technical

The increase of contingency and communication of the future

In this situation of increased contingency, therefore, circumstances, which had formerly been held to be self-evident, founder. Traditional certitudes, such as the facts that human beings cannot see very well in the dark, that they do not have a radar sense like bats, that interfaces to technology (for instance, to a computer) can be realized only by means of such somewhat involved operations as the use of cultural techniques like writing or of a keyboard, or that the life of a human being is

Ambivalence in the search for orientation by visionary communication

Ambivalence of the type described manifests itself in the divergence of visionary statements on the CT between apprehensions of catastrophes and expectations of salvation (Section 5.1), between fears of catastrophes in opposite senses (Section 5.2), as well as in the danger of the reversal of extremely far-reaching promises into extremely far-reaching fears (Section 5.3).

New assignments for technology futures analysis

In view of the situation that the increase of contingency brought about by CT initiates a need for a renewal of orientation, which, however, leads to the problems of communication of the future noted above, the question of the possibilities of technology futures analysis [18] for contributing to a constructive solution for the problems of orientation poses itself. To this end, the prerequisites for successful orientation have to be better clarified (Section 5.1), before a concrete proposal in

Résumé—the new conditio humana

The discussion on technical improvement of human beings by CT already alters the conditio humana through the simple fact that it takes place [24]. The new conditio humana designates a world in which there is no longer any ideal state of the physical and intellectual constitution of a healthy human being, but in which even this ideal state seems to be formable—independent of the question, whether and when the scientific and technical means for actually realizing a technical improvement of the

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