Denis Loveridge

Converging technologies at the nanoscale: The making of a new world?

The design of artefacts commonly involves the convergence of many technologies and this remains true for artefacts being created at the nanoscale. However, since 2000 the phrase ‘converging technologies’ has acquired a special interpretation related to the convergence of nanotechnology, biotechnology, information technology and cognitive science (acronym NBIC) for the improvement of ‘human performance’, raising the visibility of what has colloquially been called ‘nanotechnology’. Exaggerated forecasts soon followed for the value of innovatory markets for nano-artefacts or artefacts highly dependent on the various emergent nanoscale technologies. Many of these activities have resulted from a creative collision between chemistry and biology, and engineering and physics, especially where the latter have been related to micromechanical devices and electronics. The outcome has been rising expectations that the field, now designated as converging technologies, may be the beginnings of a ‘new world’ within a notional time horizon of 2030. The paper considers the possibility, feasibility and desirability of nanoscale artefacts (nano-artefacts) in contributing to a ‘new world’. By distinguishing between nano-artefacts and nanotechnology, some of the more unrealistic expectations surrounding the possibilities can be discouraged, facilitating investment decisions by business and informed debate by stakeholders regarding the future development and diffusion of nano-artefacts. The paper concludes that nano-artefacts are likely to have pervasive, radical effects by 2030, particularly in the fields that underpin life on the planet, including energy and food and the possibility of improving human performance. However, the effects are unlikely to be on the scale seen in the industrial revolution.

Foresight: seven paradoxes

Hidden beneath the surface of the fury of the current flurry of institutional national foresight activity are many paradoxes. Seven such paradoxes are explored in this paper in order to expose some myths and some conveniently ignored aspects of institutional foresight. Most controversial are perhaps the difference between real foresight and its institutional counterpart, and the role of the behavioural traits that have an intense influence on the conduct of foresight, which is seen as an ineluctable activity in human development.

Ignorance and uncertainty: Influences on future-oriented technology analysis

Future-oriented Technology Analysis (FTA) deals in phenomenological ignorance of three kinds (known unknowns, unknown knowns and unknown unknowns) that give rise to its basis in subjective opinion. These invade both the qualitative and quantitative information co-joined to create outcomes for policy and management in all the STEEPV (Social, Technological, Economic, Ecology, Politics and Values and Norms) themes. FTA then becomes an imaginative projection of current knowledge in which formal methods/techniques play a subsidiary role following Wittgensteins dictum that ‘methods pass the problem by’. These contentious matters form a platform for discussion, concluding that FTAs practical outcomes are underlain by human behaviour, subsumed under subjective opinion in many dimensions and will be more so as FTA becomes involved with technologies of great social and commercial complexity.

Institute for the future's study of the UK, 1978–1995

Abstract The method used expert opinions (collected through interviews), scenario generation, and a simple econometric model. Some methodological innovations are reported; eg aids to assist experts in thinking ahead, and in how scenarios are generated and aggregated.

A framework, with embedded FTA, to enable business networks to evolve towards sustainable development

This paper suggests a dynamic framework of continual learning to enable a business to develop a capacity to anticipate and address change within the networks in which it is embedded, using future-oriented technology analysis (FTA) thinking to shape the businesss path towards sustainable development. The proposed framework has been devised to enable a firm to become a participant that helps shaping the path to a common vision within its network being flexible enough to adapt to the changing circumstances of the environment and of its relationships. The objective is to help organisations create a tailored as well as a common strategy in their network of relationships, with the support of FTA, achieving influence among their partners to progress towards higher levels of sustainable development, in order to reach the desired common vision of sustainability.

Strategies for emerging research and innovation futures

Purpose This paper aims to present a set of strategic options for Research and Innovation (R&I) stakeholders in the light of new and emerging ways of organising and performing research. Design/methodology/approach The paper first reviews the evolution of the R&I landscape and identifies the most influential stakeholders engaged in R&I. In the light of the scenarios developed for the year 2030, a set of strategic options are identified and assessed for each stakeholder group. Findings R&I systems are now more complex than 50 years ago and will be even more in the future. Radical changes are expected in terms of the ways research is funded, organised and carried out. Some of these transformations are captured by the scenarios developed. The analysis of scenarios indicated that their feasibility and desirability differ across different sectors of industry, and research areas within the research landscape. Research limitations/implications Scenarios and strategies presented in the paper bring new considerations on the way research activities are practiced. Further research is considered to be useful on the new modes of research and implications for academia, industry, society and policy makers. Practical implications The discussion around the responses of different stakeholders vis-a-vis specific scenarios about the future in R&I practices and organisation gives a practical view about how to deal with associated emerging trends and issues. Social implications Society is a crucial stakeholder of all R&I activities. The transformative scenarios suggest that society will not only be playing a reactive role on the demand side but also more proactive role on the supply side in the decades to come. Originality/value The paper is based on work undertaken within the Research and Innovation (RIF) 2030 project. As R&I activities will be important for the development and competitiveness of the EU and its member states, the work presented here is considered to be of value by highlighting how to create more resilient strategies in a fast-changing R&I landscape.

Nano-worlds as Schumpeterian emergence and Polanyian double-movements

Abstract The overarching question raised in this special issue is whether societies can, do or indeed should steer new and emergent science and technological development and its management on to trajectories construed as more or less ‘desirable’. It therefore sits at the interface of two arenas. These are governance: processes of shaping/steering emergent technologies and markets; and sustainability: normative agendas incorporating a range of potentially competing conjectures and internally inconsistent desires such as to facilitate rather than stifle innovation, to enable economic development, to anticipate or deploy strategies to cope with risk and uncertainty, and to encourage technological developments that benefit rather than harm humans, their quality of life and the natural environment. Despite the potential for apparent empirical inconsistencies and contradictions that manifest as outcomes of the negotiation of these aims, there is (pace Karl Polanyi) a normative entry point to all of the articles and the material they draw upon, which is the idea that markets and technologies should be the handmaiden of societies, not vice versa. It is now widely recognized that ‘nanotechnology’ is a diverse set of feasible procedures emerging from scientific possibilities to enable the production of artefacts at the nanoscale creating new products, processes and services. Attention has to be paid to the desirability of these artefacts, which involve social, economic, ecologic, political and ethical matters that surround their emergence. The purpose of this special issue is to set out the current and future prospects for the widespread use (or innovation) of technological convergence at the nanoscale to create nano-artefacts, and the needs for governance and regulation that will accompany these innovations.

Shaping Thailand’s IT future through technology foresight

Technology foresight is becoming an important instrument in the policy‐making process in many countries. But unless foresight studies engage the full spectrum of users and industry sectors, they may never see implementation. In one study of the IT sector in Thailand, a tightly‐knit industry and the active participation of its trade association ensured maximum consultation and the most collective of visions. With a steering committee now monitoring implementation targets to 2010, what the Thai IT industry lacks in size it is making up for in resolution.

FTA as Due Diligence for an Era of Accelerated Interdiction by an Algorithm-Big Data Duo

In the face of the ‘digital revolution’ and its wide penetration of all aspects of life, FTA needs to consider new approaches and skills to enable it to cope with a ‘new’ world. An approach based on ‘due diligence,’ adapted from the business world, is suggested. The paper links the digital world to an algorithm-big data duo, where computation is preferred to human judgment, with its behavioural and intuitive ‘baggage’, in policy formulation. Turing’s 1936 paper enabled the evolution of digital computers capable of using complex algorithms to work with large and uncertain data sets. The current favouring of computation highlights the need for FTA to be based on an appreciation of dynamic situations that face all life on Earth replacing silo-based problem-solving. To cope with these situations, new skills are needed based on excellence in breadth and depth using due diligence concepts that can build a bridge between FTA and policy makers to ensure both the quality and the ability to embrace ignorance are coped with.

Through a glass darkly: the future and business revisited

This article revisits a paper written by Denis Loveridge 15 years ago about the merit or otherwise of the long view versus its short‐term counterpart. The paper revisits the notions set out in 1988 and enlarges them, by making use of the authors’ practical experience. Two notions lay at the heart of the paper: the question of what people will value in their lives, and Maxwell’s notion of a philosophy of “wisdom”. The authors contrast this view with those seeking an epistemological basis for foresight, concluding that the latter does not have much to offer those who conduct foresight for prosaic aims in business and the public sphere.