Twenty-First Century Society

The legacy of the twentieth century is mixed to say the least, marked by two world wars that increased the human capacity for slaughter, the development of biotechnologies and information technologies that transformed many aspects of life, and the emergence of profound intellectual debates about the possibility of planning a better future. A brief survey of civilization theories, which had fallen out of fashion by the beginning of the present century, reveals that they raise questions that deserve fresh consideration. Beginning in the year 2000, a conference on the societal implication of nanotechnology and four conferences on converging technologies launched a concentrated effort to understand how the components of modern science, technology, and society already interact and could cooperate more beneficially. On that basis, the second decade of the twenty-first century launched a comprehensive exploration effort, communicated through a substantial book-length report titled Convergence of Knowledge, Technology and Society and this Handbook of Science and Technology Convergence. In the context of sophisticated ethical analysis and social science, we may have reached the point at which the governance institutions of society require redesign.