Approach
Rather than providing a long, detailed look, this foresight activity attempted to quickly identify promising movements with potentially significant effects on the world. The study also identified “wild card” technologies that appear less promising or not likely to mature by 2050 yet would have a significant effect on the world if they were successfully developed and applied. The determination of “global significance” in such a foresight activity depends greatly on the level at which one examines a technology or its components. Individual trends and applications may not rise to significance by themselves, but their collective contributions nevertheless might produce a significant trend. Even the Internet, for example, consists of a large number of applications, systems, and components—many of which might not hold up individually to a standard of global .
4See, for example, Good, 1999; Arunachalam, 2000; and ASM, 2000 [124–126]. Introduction 3 significance yet combined contribute to the overall effect. These varied contributors often come from different technical disciplines. Although multidisciplinary, such trends were grouped based on a dominant technology or a dominant concept of each trend. Note that there is always a strong element of uncertainty when projecting technological progress and implications for the future. This effort looked for potential foreseeable implications based on progress and directions in current science and technology (S&T) and did not attempt to predict or forecast exact events and timetables. Trends were gleaned from existing outlooks, testimonies, and foresights, providing collective opinions and points of view from a broad spectrum of individuals. As many of these published trends tended to be optimistic and visionary, attempts were made to provide insights on the challenges they will face, yielding a feel not only for possible implications but also for issues that may modulate their development. The goal was to obtain a balanced perspective of current trends and directions, yielding ranges of possibilities rather than a single likely future to give a rich feel for the many possible paths that are being pursued. Such ranges of possible futures include both the optimistic and conservative extremes in technology foresights as well as ranges of optimistic and pessimistic implications of these trends. Some trends that hold promise but are unlikely to achieve global significance by 2050 are also mentioned. Although the examination of trends can yield a broad understanding of current directions, it will not include unforeseen technological breakthroughs. Unforeseen complex economic, social, ethical, and political effects on technological development will also have a major effect on what actually happens in the future. For example, although many computer scientists and visionary government program managers saw the potential for the Internet5 technology, it was practically impossible to predict whether it would become globally significant, the pace of its adoption, or its pervasive effect on social, political, and economic systems. Nevertheless, this trend study can yield a broad understanding of current issues and their potential future effects, informing policy, investment, legal, ethical, national security, and intelligence decisions today.
