Convergence

This entry was originally posted on 14 January 2003 at 2:20 p.m. Outdated links have been removed and replaced with updated ones.

That National Science Foundation/Department of Commerce report on NBIC technology has inspired an entire conference dedicated to exploiting the possibilities of these scientific frontiers. As always, our money-driven economy is inviting academics to attend for the sole purpose of picking their brains to find lucrative ways to invent new technologies that cross nano-, bio-, info-, and cogno- disciplinary boundaries (or, at least, take advantage of the gradual convergence of these fields).

Moneygrubbing aside, i noticed something on the webpage devoted to the workshops--in one of the workshop descriptions, the blurb reads,

This will be a highly multidisciplinary workshop with respect to the complexity of the biological systems being studied and with respect to the technological approaches used to understand how these different sensory systems function.

This made me stop and think: why is it that we try our best to capture the organic nature of biology in the imagery of technology? Shouldn't we be doing the complete opposite--shouldn't we be trying to understand technology in organic terms, instead of understanding biology in technological terms?

It all seems a little backwards to me. Organisms are much more efficient (not to mention versatile, adaptable, and environmentally compatible) than machines. It would make so much more sense to make our machines more organic than to make our bodies more mechanical.

That's humanity for you: never quite satisfied with nature as it stands.