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Research Article

ESD Reports Summer 2005

PoET Addresses Emerging Technologies

By Renee Robins, Director of Special Projects, MIT Technology and Policy Program; Associate Program Director for M.Phil. Programs, Cambridge-MIT Institute

The Program on Emerging Technologies (PoET) is a collaborative effort spanning MIT’s School of Engineering and the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences, involving MIT’s Engineering Systems Division, Technology and Policy Program, the Center for International Studies, the Department of Political Science, and the Program in Science, Technology, and Society. In January of 2004, the National Science Foundation awarded $2.97 million to PoET for an Integrative Graduate Education and Research Training Program (IGERT) on Emerging Technologies. This is the first time that MIT has been successful in NSF’s competitive IGERT grant program.

PoET addresses emerging technologies in areas including ubiquitous computing, genetic engineering, and micro- and nano-technologies. Although these emerging technologies are developing at extraordinary rates, understanding of their economic, security, environmental, and cultural implications has not kept pace with underlying technological change. Through research, education/training, and outreach, the program addresses diverse implications of emerging technologies and how responses to anticipated policy or societal implications may shape the way in which those technologies are developed. Participating faculty, researchers, and students have interest and expertise in economic, security, environmental, social, ethical, and other types of impacts, as well as specific technology areas.

PoET is led by four co-PIs, ESD Director Daniel Hastings, Technology and Policy Program Director Dava Newman, Kenneth Oye, of Political Science and ESD, and Merritt Roe Smith of the Program in Science, Technology and Society. These professors came together with an interest in the impact that emerging technologies have on individuals and society, a recognition that effects often cannot be predicted and technology forecasts are typically wrong, and a desire to improve decision making in light of the pervasive uncertainty that is usually overlooked or ignored.

Eight doctoral students participated as IGERT trainees in the 2004-2005 academic year. One graduated in June, 2005,, and four additional students have accepted IGERT traineeships for 2005-2006. These students, drawn from the Engineering Systems Division, the Department of Political Science, and the graduate program in the History and Social Study of Science and Technology, were chosen for their interest in emerging technologies, uncertainty, and related policy, history, or social issues, as well as for their strong academic records and work experience.

In addition to their degree requirements, IGERT trainees take two new core courses and an integrative seminar to develop competencies in the consequences of technical change. By participating in PoET research, workshops, and seminars, these students have a unique opportunity to foster professional relationships with faculty and students in different disciplines and to conduct research within a collaborative and multidisciplinary environment.

PoET’s long-term research goals are to:

  • Identify expected effects of emerging technologies, and suggest near term measures to improve responses to these expected effects;
  • Identify sources of uncertainty regarding expected effects likely to bear on critical public and private sector decisions, and suggest strategies to mitigate key sources of uncertainty through research;
  • Assess irreducible sources of uncertainty on effects of emergent technologies, and suggest strategies to increase institutional capacity for error correction through adaptation to gradually emerging information;
  • Develop ways of using historical research to improve responses to emergent technologies, by using formal methods to structure qualitative case work and by using case work to modify decision analytic methods.

PoET research efforts involve multidisciplinary panels of technologists, social scientists, and humanists who work together to identify potential effects, highlight critical sources of uncertainty, and evaluate limits of their knowledge. Panelists combine insights into directions of technological change, applications of technologies, and implications for society, economy, security and environment, and help students refine specific research questions. Retrospective examinations of past efforts to anticipate effects of technological changes provide important lessons about the unpredictability of technology development and application, as well as unintended consequences, and highlight the need for understanding and responding to uncertainty.

During AY 2005, efforts focused on ubiquitous computing, with the first multidisciplinary panel meeting held in October, 2004. With an initial focus on RFID issues, MIT students, faculty, and researchers came together for brief presentations by engineers, social scientists, and historians followed by extensive discussion about uncertainties, questions, and needed research. The IGERT Trainees worked beforehand in faculty-led groups to research and prepare background information that helped set the stage for the discussions that followed.

Preparation for other workshops and seminars over the course of the year had students engaged with their peers and faculty in different combinations as they continued to conduct research and draft working papers and other background materials in a collaborative and multidisciplinary manner. The students have found the process of working collaboratively on a piece of a broader research topic with people from different disciplines to be intellectually stimulating and very rewarding. The working papers they are developing also clearly benefit from this collaborative and interdisciplinary approach.