Management Implications
of Future S&T Issues
• Risk management
• Information for Policymaking
• Interdisciplinary Science and Technology
• Globalization
• Other items
Regional Demographics
of Participants
Question 1: S&T Risk Management
General Comments
• Educated global opinion & ethical scientists vs.
Regulation & enforcement: is a resolution
possible?
• Moore's Law is a self-fulfilling; Regulators have
no chance of keeping up.
• The gap between those who become physically and
mentally enhanced over the next 25 years and
those who don't, will be a new source of conflict.
• S&T risks affect many countries; therefore,
international cooperation is justified
S&T Risk General Comments
(continued)
• Prohibitions will drive science underground
• The whole world has to be educated or else innovation
will be prevented.
• North America took long-range future risks the most
seriously
• China took the global S&T forecasting and assessment
organization the most seriously
• The precautionary principle cannot stop risk, but should
measure and make known the effects of using the results
of scientific research; the regulatory burden should be
appropriate for the risk involved
S&T Risk Management elements
- synthesis • Expert International definitions
• Build consensus among major S&T countries, then
broader global community, possibly leading to
treaties and sanctions
• International S&T organization
• Media (also included in question #2)
• University education (also included in #2)
• Global S&T Fund
• Davos-like S&T Forum
International definitions
Eminent S&T leaders, academies of sciences,
special S&T interest groups define:
•
•
•
•
International risk standards
Codes of conduct
Scientific Oath (like the Hippocratic Oath)
Text for international treaties including possible
sanctions and criteria for intervention
• Missions for on-going systems
International S&T
Organization
Not regulatory, but information systems:
• Networks and Nodes (Academies of Sciences,
special interest groups e.g. NNI, risk
improvement communities
• Forecasts, assessments, monitoring of both risk
and opportunities
• Risk Data base (facts, informed judgements,
conjectures, alternative views about speed,
impacts, severity
University Education
Since many thought that only through the
training of honorable scientists could risk be
managed, universities should require:
• Ethics of science courses to include humanities,
medicine, environmental science, ethics, religion,
philosophy, global view of human affairs and …
perceive ethical, environmental and social
consequences of research and technology
• Code of conduct
• Scientific Oath
Global S&T Fund
• Fund defensive technologies to reduce risk
• Fund globally important R&D that cannot
attract venture capital due to long time prior
to return on investment, e.g., non-greenhouse
global energy technologies
• Deputizes labs as UN deputizes peacekeeping
forces
• Long-term financing via licensing technology
Davos-like S&T forums
• National S&T Policy Officials
• National Lab Scientists
• Corporate R&D Managers
• University Research Scientists
• NGO S&T Leaders
• International S&T Officials
• Media - news executives, science writers, software
designers, TV/radio/movie producers
International Treaties
• Regulating technological applications; not
so much for basic science
• Use of sanctions
• Disagreement over intervention even when
the most extreme threats to planetary life
support exist (there were no interventions in
the development and deployment of nuclear
weapons.)
Media
• Public discussion about S&T risk management
• Connect stories of stakeholder groups,
International S&T organization, University
researchers, Global S&T Fund, Davos-like
S&T Forums, to inform a broad public
discussion to help build global consensus
• International standards have to be consistent
with S&T changes and human evolution
Question 2:
Information for Policymaking
Improve or bypass government policymakers?
• Revolts against bureaucratic control will stimulate special
interest groups and innovations
• Public policymakers cannot keep up, instead groups will form
(national academies, NNI, etc) to make the policy others
accept
• Politicians may have to be bypassed with new uses of Internet
to improve collective intelligence
• Let corporations invest into the best college students and
issue press releases to attack venture capital, rather than use
the slow peer reviewed professional journals
• Markets will drive the actual decisions, but governments can
help bring leaders together
Improve Public Policy
Information
• The onus is on scientists to close the knowledge gap
• Communications of science to the public and
politicians through the media is the key
• We do not recognize the need for trained expertise
that crosses the boundaries between the natural,
medical, and technological sciences, on the one hand,
and the policy and social sciences, on the other.
• Scientists are not rewarded for trying to improve
public understanding; they are criticized for doing it
Regional-oriented comments
• Developing countries have virtually no basic research
and R&D is nearly always controlled by government
• Post-communist countries have no S&T policy
because focus is only on privatization and monetary
policy
• Among the EU-citizens surveyed, 45.3% declare to be
rather interested in science and technology issues,
whereas fewer find politics (41.3%) and economics
(37.9%) interesting.
• The EU has developed a “Science and Society” action
plan to address this question
Elements for Strategic Actors
• Government Policymakers
• S&T Donors
• Scientists and Engineers
• Media
• Private Sector
• Education
Government policymakers
• Create systematic prioritization processes
• The force of change will be so great that politicians
will have to change
• Create Ministry of S&T which conducts regular
briefings for cabinet
• Make it mandatory for governemt officials dealing
with S&T to have close contact with senior scientists
Government (continued)
• Include S&T futures in strategic planning, framing
policies
• Change the policymaking team to include
government, S&T inst., media, and public
• Learn from the success of the Human genome
project
• Receive regular overviews of S&T issues for
Parliament committees
• Create ways to understand S&T nuances
Government (continued)
• Political parties should have S&T committees with
modern communications methods
• Encourage national labs personnel to take
communications courses and use speakers bureaus.
• Create senior positions for those trained in the
linkages among natural & social sciences, medical
and technological sciences, and policy
• Better to have politicians who can listen to science
than scientists who can talk to politicians
• Create multi-stake holder participatory processes
S&T Donors
Require that scientific research proposals include:
• what the public currently thinks about a research
topic
• who needs to know the conclusions; and
• how the research results will be communicated and
to whom
Scientists and Engineers
• It is the S&T community’s responsibility to improve
policymaking
• Adopt a politician
• Run for political office
• Make communications simple and connected to daily
life
• Increase exchanges among government policymakers,
media, and the S&T community using the latest
communications technology
Scientists and Engineers (continued)
• Identify the people who can communicate
effectively
• Hold regular meetings with media
• Validate S&T communicators (e.g.,Segan) who are
specialist-generalists
• Understand that the views of local constituencies
are more important to politicians than research
from scientists
• Engage in large-scale popularization of their work
Private Sector and NGOs
• Conduct briefings for politicians via
National Academies that point out the
economic impacts of S&T
• Make the committee define their views in
public meetings
• Complexity leads to new emergent systems
Media
• Provide open discussions when experts
disagree
• Have S&T experts in local, national, and
international media
• Create one-stop-shopping location to get
current scientific options on policy topics
from the Internet
Web site on topics could show:
• relevant theory and what is known or generally believed
• alternative scientifically credible explanations of meaning
of data, and credible descriptions about possible impacts
• speculation and conjecture about the issue
• links to source documents describing research or data,
research institutes, key research documents, advocacy
groups, and related interdisciplinary groups
With a set of standards outlining:
• consistent style for the WebPages for all different issues
• management structure for continuous review and update
• 'peer review' process to evaluate statements
• How policymakers’ staffs could monitor and distill this
information, and provide policymakers’ feedback
Education
• Universities should include courses on public
communications of scientific research
• Elementary and secondary school curricula
should include systems, logical, analytical,
creative, lateral, imaginative, and futuristic
thinking
Other S&T management
issues?
• S&T Ethics
• How can modern technologies accelerate the
development of S&T in developing nations?
• Popularization of science worldwide.
• Third World has an enormous need for
scientists and far more in the future.
• How to reconcile science’s contribution to
human well-being and the profit motive?
Other S&T management
issues? (cont.)
• Who owns intellectual property? How do you deal
with patent rights? Does it make sense in a rapidly
changing world to sell your product without regard
to patent?
• One of the major problems, for federal agency
scientists, is the overall inability to receive rewards
and advancement based on their scientific work. In
most, if not all, agencies, to advance requires
pursuit of the " management" career ladder.
Other S&T management
issues? (cont.)
• Information technology will unite the world
into one super Internet making it very
difficult to keep secrets.
• Are there limits to the rates at which
humanity can absorb S&T?
• The most destructive nano-based weapons
may not be nanosystems as such but
interactions between civilian
nanotechnology and information attacks.
Other S&T management
issues? (cont.)
• Patents already exist for prototype systems to
insert millions of fibers into the brain, which
might someday allow gigabyte thruput into and
out of the brain. Given the variety of incentives
and cultures in the world -- including cultures
which "own" employees during the workday -it is unclear how much this technology will be
used for human advancement and
augmentation, versus enslavement.
Other S&T management
issues? (cont.)
• What are the best tools and concepts for
prioritization beyond spreadsheets and
guessing?
• Information overload