The Power of Convergence
In June 2007, the first generation of the Apple iPhone was released to the public. From the perspective of today’s crowded smartphone marketplace, it’s hard to realize how seismic an event this was at the time. Yet, looking back, it started a trend in how we use and interact with technology that continues to reverberate through society to this day.
The iPhone stands as an iconic example of technological convergence—what happens when different strands of innovation intertwine together (a topic we’ll come back to in chapter nine)—and the social and technological transformations that can occur as a result. These days, smartphones integrate hundreds of different technologies: nanoscale-featured processors and memory chips, advanced materials, cloud computing, image processing, video communication, natural language processing, rudimentary artificial intelligence, biometrics. They’ll even allow you to make phone calls. They are a triumph of our ability to weave together separate technologies to make devices that are not only more than the sum of their parts, but are also transforming the ways we live our lives. But as the capabilities of smartphones and other personal electronics expand, there’s a growing fear of serious unintended consequences, so much so that, in 2018, JANA Partners LLC and the California State Teachers’ Retirement System—two investors in Apple—requested the company actively address the potential impacts of iPhone use on teenagers.1
Smartphones are a useful, but still rather crude, example of technological convergence. Expanding on this, we’re now beginning to see convergence between biotechnologies, materials science, robotics, artificial intelligence, neurotechnologies, and other areas that are rapidly catching up with what used to be limited to deeply futuristic science fiction. This is seen across the movies in this book, from the use of genetic engineering in Jurassic Park (chapter two) to human augmentation in Ghost in the Shell (chapter seven). The power of convergence between different technological trends particularly stands out in the movie Transcendence (chapter nine). Here, the technology we see on the screen is firmly rooted in Hollywood fantasy. Despite this, the film captures the scale of technological leaps that become possible when technical knowhow from one area is used to solve problems and accelerate progress in another.
Transcendence is, at heart, a movie about transcending our biological and evolutionary heritage. Inspired by the ideas of transhumanists like Ray Kurzweil, it imagines a future where convergence between biotechnology, neurotechnology, nanotechnology, and artificial intelligence leads to a profound shift in capabilities—albeit one with sobering consequences. There’s a scene relatively early on in the movie where artificial-intelligence (AI) genius Will Caster (played by Johnny Depp) is dying, and his only hope is for his consciousness to be uploaded into a revolutionary new artificial-intelligence-powered computer. But, to achieve this, his colleagues need to use equally cutting-edge neuroscience and sensor technology to record and store every nuance of Caster’s brain. In true movie fashion, they succeed just before he passes away, and Caster becomes a human-machine chimera who transcends his biological roots.
The science and technology in Transcendence are fanciful. But as you peel away the Hollywood hyperbole, the movie hints at a coming level of technological convergence that could radically change the world we live in. This is rooted in our growing ability to blur the lines between physical technologies like materials, machines, and electronics; biological technologies like gene editing and biomanipulation; and cyber technologies like machine learning, natural language processing, and massive-scale data collection and manipulation. What unfolds in Transcendence is scientifically impossible. But what is not impossible—and what scientists and engineers are becoming increasingly adept at—is our growing ability to merge together and integrate seemingly different technologies, to transform the world we live in.
This is perhaps most apparent in emerging gene-editing technologies, where scientists are developing the abilities to rewrite the DNA-based code that underpins every living organism, something that is only possible through converging technologies. But we’re also seeing this convergence leading to massive advances in areas like designer materials, artificial intelligence, human-machine interfaces, and many others. For perhaps the first time, we are getting close to being able to far outstrip nature in how we design and engineer the world around us.
This is where the true transformative power of convergence lies, and it’s also where some of the greatest potential pitfalls are. Through converging technologies, we’re developing capabilities that could radically improve lives by eradicating diseases, providing cheap and plentiful renewable energy, and ensuring everyone has access to nutritious food and clean water. At the same time, there are tremendous risks. We don’t yet know how large-scale automation will affect jobs in the future, for instance, or how access to technologies may simply lead to the poor getting poorer and the rich richer. We have little idea how to wield increasingly powerful gene-editing technologies responsibly. And we’re not sure yet whether the rapid development of artificial intelligence is going to make the world a better place or lead to the end of humanity as we know it! The harsh reality is that, while convergence is massively accelerating our technological capabilities, we still have little if any idea what might go wrong, or what the unintended consequences could be.
This is a theme that runs deeply through this book, and it’s one that gets to the heart of the morality and the ethics of the science and the technologies we develop and use. If we’re going to navigate the world of these converging technologies successfully, we’re going to have to start thinking more creatively and innovatively about where we’re going as a species, what could go wrong, and what we need to do to make things go right. Of course, movies are not the most reliable guide here, and I’d hate to give the impression that surviving and thriving in the twenty-first century is as easy as watching a few films. But they do provide a platform for exploring some of the more intriguing and important emerging and converging trends in technology innovation, and the tension between developing them responsibly and ensuring they reach their full potential. And here they touch on another common theme that threads through the following chapters: the challenges and opportunities of socially responsible innovation.
Socially Responsible Innovation
The movie The Man in the White Suit (chapter ten) is perhaps one of the less well-known films in this book, but it is one that admirably highlights this tension between impactful and often well-intentioned innovation and unforeseen social consequences. In the movie, Sidney Stratton is a scientist with a vision. And that vision is to create the perfect fabric, one that’s incredibly strong, doesn’t wear out, and never needs washing. There’s only one problem: He never bothered to ask anyone else what they thought of his invention. As a result, he finds himself attracting the ire of his co-workers, the textile industry, the local union, and even his landlady. Stratton made the classic mistake of thinking that, just because he could do something, others would love it.
Even though the movie was made back in 1951, it eloquently captures the idea of socially responsible innovation. This is another theme that threads through this book, and it’s one that is deeply intertwined with the opportunities and challenges presented by converging technologies.
Responsible Innovation (sometimes referred to as Responsible Research and Innovation) is a hot topic these days. There’s even an academic journal devoted to it. The thinking behind responsible innovation is that we don’t always have a second or third chance to get things right when developing new technologies, and so it’s better to think about the potential consequences as early as we can, and take action to avoid the bad ones as early in the development process as possible. There are plenty of formal definitions for responsible innovation.2 But many of these boil down to ensuring that anyone who is potentially impacted by technological innovation has a say in how it’s developed and used, and taking steps to ensure innovation that leads to a better future for as many people as possible, without causing undue harm. This is easy to say, of course, but fiendishly difficult to put into practice.
This idea of social responsibility comes up time and time again in the movies here. In many cases, a film’s dramatic tension draws directly on some person or