* SELECTED HIGHLIGHTS *
"Life in 2015 will be revolutionized by the growing effect of multidisciplinary technology across all dimensions of life: social, economic, political, and personal. Biotechnology will enable us to identify, understand, manipulate, improve, and control living organisms (including ourselves). The revolution of information availability and utility will continue to profoundly affect the world in all these dimensions. Smart materials, agile manufacturing, and nanotechnology will change the way we produce devices while expanding their capabilities.
"The results could be astonishing. Effects may include significant improvements in human quality of life and life span, high rates of industrial turnover, lifetime worker training, continued globalization, reshuffling of wealth, cultural amalgamation or invasion with potential for increased tension and conflict, shifts in power from nation states to non-governmental organizations and individuals, mixed environmental effects, improvements in quality of life with accompanying prosperity and reduced tension, and the possibility of human eugenics and cloning.
"The actual realization of these possibilities will depend on a number of factors, including local acceptance of technological change, levels of technology and infrastructure investments, market drivers and limitations, and technology breakthroughs and advancements. Since these factors vary across the globe, the implementation and effects of technology will also vary, especially in developing countries. Nevertheless, the overall revolution and trends will continue through much of the developed world.
"The general pace of technological advance and change seems to be accelerating. Economic growth, especially in the United States, is fueling applied research and development investments, resulting in new product innovations and approaches. Computer technology continues to advance to the point where products become obsolete in two to three years. In some areas of biomedical engineering the pace is even faster; some medical devices are obsolete by the time a prototype is developed. Such a pace could make it more difficult for legal and ethical advances to keep up with technology."The fast pace of technological development and breakthroughs makes foresight difficult, but the technology revolution seems globally significant and quite likely."
The Revolution of Living Things"Biotechnology will begin to revolutionize life itself by 2015. Disease, malnutrition, food production, pollution, life expectancy, quality of life, crime, and security will be significantly addressed, improved, or augmented. Some advances could be viewed as accelerations of human-engineered evolution of plants, animals, and in some ways even humans with accompanying changes in the ecosystem. Research is also under way to create new, free-living organisms.
"A marked acceleration is likely by 2015 in the expansion of human life spans along with significant improvements in the quality of human life. Better disease control, custom drugs, gene therapy, age mitigation and reversal, memory drugs, prosthetics, bionic implants, animal transplants, and many other advances may continue to increase human life span and improve the quality of life. Some of these advances may even improve human performance beyond current levels (e.g., through artificial sensors). We anticipate that the developed world will lead the developing world in reaping these benefits as it has in the past.
"By 2015 we may have the capability to use genetic engineering techniques to 'improve' the human species and clone humans. These will be very controversial developments--among the most controversial in the entire history of mankind. It is unclear whether wide-scale efforts will be initiated by 2015, and cloning of humans may not be technically feasible by 2015. However, we will probably see at least some narrow attempts such as gene therapy for genetic diseases and cloning by rogue experimenters. The controversy will be in full swing by 2015 (if not sooner). [Ed.-The controversy is in full swing now. See Human Reproductive Cloning from the Perspective of the Future.]
"Thus, the revolution of biology will not come without issue and unforeseen redirections. Significant ethical, moral, religious, privacy, and environmental debates and protests are already being raised in such areas as genetically modified foods, cloning, and genomic profiling. These issues should not halt this revolution, but they will modify its course over the next 15 years as the population comes to grips with the new powers enabled by biotechnology.
"The revolution of biology relies heavily on technological trends not only in the biological sciences and technology but also in microelectromechanical systems, materials, imaging, sensor, and information technology. The fast pace of technological development and breakthroughs makes foresight difficult, but advances in genomic profiling, cloning, genetic modification, biomedical engineering, disease therapy, and drug developments are accelerating."The Technology Revolution
"Beyond the agricultural and industrial revolutions of the past, a broad, multidisciplinary technology revolution is changing the world. The synergy and mutual benefit among technologies are enabling large advances and new applications and concepts. Information technology is already revolutionizing our lives and will continue to be aided by breakthroughs in materials and nanotechnology. Biotechnology will revolutionize living organisms. Materials and nanotechnology are developing new devices with unforeseen capabilities. These technologies are affecting our lives. They are heavily intertwined, making the technology revolution highly multidisciplinary and accelerating progress in each area.
"The revolutionary effects of biotechnology may be the most startling. Collective breakthroughs should improve both the quality and the length of human life. Engineering of the environment will be unprecedented in its degree of intervention and control. Other technology trend effects may be less obvious to the public but in hindsight may be quite revolutionary. Fundamental changes in what and how we manufacture will produce unprecedented customization and fundamentally new products and capabilities.
"Despite the inherent uncertainty in looking at future trends, a range of technological possibilities and effects are foreseeable and will depend on various enablers and barriers.
"These revolutionary effects are not proceeding without issue. Various ethical, economic, legal, environmental, safety, and other social concerns and decisions must be addressed as the world's population comes to grip with the potential effect of these trends on their cultures and their lives. The most significant issues may be privacy, economic disparity, cultural threats (and reactions), and bioethics. In particular, issues such as eugenics, human cloning, and genetic modification invoke the strongest ethical and moral reactions. Understanding these issues is quite complex, since they both drive technology directions and influence each other in secondary and higher-order ways. Citizens and decision makers need to inform themselves about technology, assembling and analyzing these complex interactions to truly understand the debates surrounding technology. Such steps will prevent naive decisions, maximize technology's benefit given personal values, and identify inflection points at which decisions can have the desired effect without being negated by an unanalyzed issue.
"Technology's promise is here today and will march forward. It will have widespread effects across the globe. Yet, the effects of the technology revolution will not be uniform, playing out differently on the global stage depending on acceptance, investment, and a variety of other decisions. There will be no turning back, however, since some societies will avail themselves of the revolution, and globalization will thus change the environment in which each society lives. The world is in for significant change as these advances play out on the global stage."
Copyright © 2001 RAND