Wrestling with Convergence
Part 1: “What Convergence Hath Wrought”
Korea IT Times
August 19, 2011
The Asia Institute recently held a round-table discussion on the topic of technology convergence. The discussion was led by the director of the Asia Institute, Emanuel Pastreich, who serves as a professor at Humanitas College of Kyung Hee University. Also in attendance were Charlie Wolf, director at the Social Impact Assessment Center, Paul Callomon, collections manager at the Academy of Natural Sciences, Stephanie Wan, technology policy specialist at NASA, Daniel Lafontaine, business consultant at AMA Korea; Alan Engel, president of Paterra, Inc. of Japan; Matthew Weigand, founder of Responsiv.Asia, Tahir Hameed, research fellow at KAIST (Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology) and Vince Rubino, Global Team Leader of Business Development at the Korea Institute of Toxicology. In this first part of a five-part series, the experts discussed the social implications of the rapid technological change that convergence represents.
Emanuel Pastreich: Moore’s Law holds that “the number of transistors that can be placed inexpensively on an integrated circuit has doubled every two years for the last half century.” This phenomenon could be said to drive all the central trends in society,
