The OECD Observer
October/November 1998, No. 214

 

The Promise of 21st century technology
By Riel Miller

 

The development of electricity, telephones, aviation and private motor cars underpinned the mass economy that dominated most of the 20th century, rapidly driving up living standards in the OECD area. But what about tomorrow’s technologies? Which social and economic conditions are likely to turn technology’s potential into a desirable reality? (21st Century Technologies: Promises and Perils of a Dynamic Future, OECD Publications, Paris. (http://www.oecd.org/scripts/publications/bookshop/redirect.asp?031998031P1))

As the century draws to a close, it is worth wondering whether the world is on course for further dramatic social and economic change, and whether such changes as do take place can be steered to our benefit. There are many questions that have to be asked. Do we have the technological and social capacity to keep on advancing and inventing new tools, new products and new ways of organising everyday work and home life? What will the costs and the risks be? And what does it all mean for our traditions, or for the environment? Preservation versus change, conservatism versus dynamism, incrementalism versus radicalism—these are the dividing lines of the debate as we approach not only a new century but a new millennium too.

The OECD is actively engaged in the discussion and has developed a range of outlooks. At one end of the spectrum are scenarios which involve almost exclusive dependence on technology to solve pressing problems. At the other end the pace of technical innovation is slow, held back by efforts to avoid breaking with social and cultural norms. The conclusion from this analysis is striking: the prospects for prosperity over the next twenty-five years will probably depend on encouraging social and economic changes of at least the same magnitude as those we have experienced in the twentieth century. That means transitions at least as important as those from the farm to the factory floor to the office, and from country to city to suburb.

Ensuring that tomorrow’s extraordinary technological potential gets beyond the drawing-board and makes a full contribution to human well-being will be a challenge. It will depend on fostering a particular interplay of forces and changes, a series of mutually reinforcing developments which together are likely to create what might be called socio-technical dynamism.

Realising this dynamism will largely rest upon our capacity to undertake change in almost everything we do, from the way work is organised and what is produced to where people live and how they relate to each other. Making such complex and profound changes will not be easy. But a brief examination of technology’s potential shows it is likely to be worth the effort.

Over the next few decades significant progress is expected across a broad spectrum of technologies: computing, genetics, brain technology, new materials (in particular miniaturisation and smart composites), energy, transportation and environmental tools and systems. The technical foundation (as distinct from the economic and social ones) for this wave of innovation will come, in large part, from some important developments in the fields of digital and genetic information. The manipulation of these two building blocks—one of calculation, the other of nature—is likely to open whole new horizons for both tool builders and users.

One easy way of tracking technological change over time is to compare measurements of speed, size and cost. Twenty-five years ago a megabyte of semiconductor memory cost around $550,000; today it costs around $4. Microprocessors in 1997 were 100,000 times faster than the 1950 originals. Should these trends continue—and there are many experts who think they will—by 2020 one desktop computer will be as powerful as all of the computers currently in Silicon Valley.

Twenty-five years from now, after more than five decades of development, the microprocessor, information technologies in general and networks will probably have penetrated every aspect of human activity. Even remote corners of the world will have access to interactive and responsive global networks. Beyond simply accelerating the pace of change or reducing the cost of many current activities, the use of these high-performance digital tools could lead to more profound transformations in work and life styles.

 

New places, new markets

The advanced power of computing may be used to help people create new kinds of communities, both virtual and real. In some parts of the world this could mean the emergence of new types of villages, with new structures and economic purposes. Other people will be attracted by better infrastructure, services and improved environmental conditions to stay in cities and so-called silicon alleys. In either case, the use of computing power will enable choices about how to live that are not possible today. Physical isolation or distance will no longer have to be a disadvantage, while new types of co-operation will lessen the pressure on people to work together in the same factory, office or classroom. And the availability of massively powerful information technology will open up the way to improving efficiency as well as to new ways of thinking about traditional activities, such as urban transportation, energy and health care.

For instance, computer-enabled development of electronic commerce is likely to profoundly modify current ways of doing business. Anyone with a computer and Internet access will be in a position to become a merchant and reach out to customers across the globe, and any consumer will be able to shop the world for goods and services. As a result, consumers could become producers and yesterday’s retailing intermediary could become tomorrow’s evaluator of product quality. Indeed, the process of inventing and selling products could be spread more evenly, with consumers becoming generators of value-added by feeding in custom specifications, then searching out producers and marketing their new good.

This is already beginning to happen, for example, with the development of a powerful computer language, Linux, which though inspired by one individual, Linus Torvalds, is the outcome of the contributions of thousands of volunteer programmers around the world. Even products as basic as the bicycle could be redesigned by ordinary individuals then re-sold either as a physical good or as intellectual property. In other words, cyberspace could one day become a global marketplace where consumers and producers are so seamlessly integrated they can change places with each other.

As for the inquiry and collaboration that are indispensable for learning and basic scientific research, the power of tomorrow’s information technologies will open up new vistas by radically improving the capacity to communicate and simulate. For instance, convincing and complex virtual reality simulations should allow more people to ‘learn by doing’. Such technology will also make joint experimental research easier and could enhance the independence of learners by allowing them to study at their own pace. Once liberated from some of the constraints of cost, time and space of traditional education, learning systems that encourage individual creativity may take over.

 

Biotechnology will open up new vistas

The identification of genetic information and applications of genetic engineering are already making their mark in society and will profoundly affect many facets of everyday life in the future. Human health, food production (both livestock and plants) and food processing are all likely to be influenced by advances at the interface of genetics and technology.

Work is already well under way on the human genome; by 2005, at the latest, scientists should know the full DNA sequence of a typical man or woman. Although at present only a very small percentage of this information has been mapped, the pace of discovery is expected to accelerate. As the average cost of sequencing each of the millions of DNA base pairs rapidly diminishes—from $5 in 1990 to less than fifty cents by the beginning of the next century—the number of DNA base pairs sequenced each year is rising exponentially, from around 40 million in 1990 to over 400 million in 1997. In parallel, the next twenty-five years could see major breakthroughs in disentangling the complexity of the human body’s biochemical pathways along which genetic information is transferred, and in understanding how certain genes interact with environmental influences to exert different effects on different people.

But perhaps the most dramatic breakthroughs will be achieved through combinations of various scientific disciplines. Innovative work cutting across biochemistry, physics, molecular biology, neuroscience, biotechnology, nanotechnology and microelectronics looks set to make significant advances in the field of bioelectronics, for example, with the development of biosensors, and neuroinformatics, which link micro-processing with the human nervous system. spending on genetics With the expected trend toward more diversification of R&D into chemicals, materials, energy technologies and so on, major advances in other cross-disciplinary fields could take on significant proportions—for example, the creation of synthesised gene-derived enzyme catalysts, non-existent in nature, for use in chemical engineering; biological processes to fabricate molecular structures and more complex materials; bio-engineered plants to produce pharmaceuticals and raw materials for plastics.

Biotechnology applications are likely to become more pervasive in human activity in the next quarter-century. Already well entrenched and expanding in human health, animal husbandry, plant agriculture and food processing, they could find their way increasingly into environmental management, manufacturing processes, new materials and computers.

 

But what are the risks?

The picture painted here is a promising one. But of course there are myriad risks too which could attend tomorrow’s plausible technological innovations. That has always been the case. New tools often have more than one use; for example, lasers are an indispensable medical tool, and they also have applications as a military weapon.

Technological advances per se provide no foregone conclusions about how they will be used. Indeed, looked at purely from the perspective of technical feasibility—without taking into account the economic and social safeguards that are likely to be prerequisites for the rapid emergence of tomorrow’s technological breakthroughs—three broad dangers can be identified.

First, tomorrow’s technologies could contain destructive potential which will be both powerful and difficult to control. They could pose threats to the natural and human environment, either by accident or through malevolence.

Second, there are purely technological risks involving the possibility of more vulnerability to system-wide breakdowns, like the imminent Y2K. As the world becomes more diversified, decentralised and dependent on technology, unmanageable and potentially harmful failures could arise. Dependence on computers, networks and the software that runs them could leave critical parts of society’s support infrastructure, from medical systems and sewage treatment facilities to security and air-traffic control, open to inadvertent crashes, or even intentional attack. There is also the danger that as information technology spreads it will make it easier to violate basic privacy or civil rights and to engage in criminal practices ranging from fraud to theft and collusion.

The third danger relates to ethics, values and mindsets. Even the initial steps in the long-term development and diffusion of radically innovative technologies could pose a strong challenge to existing ethical and cultural standards, testing people’s tolerance of the unknown and the unfamiliar. Some technological breakthroughs, such as human cloning, could end up provoking serious social unrest.

 

Encouraging socio-technical dynamism

Reducing the chance that one of these risks becomes a reality while also harvesting technology’s potential will require concerted action. As history demonstrates, the availability of a particular scientific discovery or innovative technology is no assurance that its potential will be extended into responsible and useful applications, or that it will spread to those who might use it to generate the most social and economic benefits. Appropriate conditions and focused policies will both be essential in order to realise the virtuous circle of socio-technical dynamism.

So, what are the conditions within which this technological potential can be achieved? These can be broken down into four important trends. The first one is the diffusion and intensification of competition in existing and emerging markets, in part through the process of globalisation. Second, the transition to a knowledge economy may rupture many of the entrenched relationships of the industrial era and open up new possibilities for intangible, non-firm-based value-added activity. In tomorrow’s knowledge economy, imagination—even art—could become as important for competitiveness as the speed at which a product is brought to the market. Third, growing economic, social and environmental interdependence, particularly at the global level, will probably bring about significant changes in the way knowledge, resources and sovereignty are managed. And finally, individual and collective aspirations and the drive for a better life will as ever play their fundamental role in shaping public policy and motivating individuals to take the risks necessary to invent new social and economic structures and foster new lifestyles.

Reinforcing these broad trends may be a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for realising socio-technical dynamism. An important step is to introduce policies aimed at stimulating creativity and innovation, as well as improving collective decision-making at local, national and global levels. These policies are central to the attainment of socio-technical dynamism because the individual’s capacity to compete, assess risk and learn very much depends on co-operative efforts to ensure the accessibility and reliability of information in the knowledge economy. Furthermore, unless policies are predicated on pursuing openness and tolerance, people’s ability to find creative inspiration from the free sharing of ideas and contrasting perspectives will be impaired.

The traditional job of governments to assure a stable macro-economic framework, encourage efficient markets, boost learning capacity and limit social exclusion will remain. However, finding the appropriate combinations of public and private, local and global, innovative and traditional approaches will be an ongoing challenge. It is also a moving target, for if creativity is to be the well-spring of tomorrow’s prosperity, then the policies for socio-technical dynamism are likely to be continuously evolving.

 

Riel Miller: OECD Advisory Unit to the Secretary-General on Multi-disciplinary Issues