Andrew Maynard: Where Do We Go From Here?

Small Gods... ...and the Art of Technology Innovation Andrew D. Maynard Director, Risk Science Center University of Michigan School of Public Health Cincinnati Contemporary Arts Center, December 11 2010

“The futures not set. Theres no fate but what we make for ourselves” John Connor, Terminator 2: Judgement Day, 1991

Risk: The likelihood of adverse consequences arising from actions or events

Risk:Deconstructed Good Cause Effect Bad Beneﬁcial Action Consequences Harmful Constructive Decision Ramiﬁcations Destructive

Risk:Deconstructed Good Cause Effect Bad Beneﬁcial Action Consequences (Inaction) Harmful Constructive Decision Ramiﬁcations (Indecision) Destructive

The Eruption of Mt. Vesuvius. Pierre-Jacques Volaire, 1777

Sheffield, circa 1874. Source: LIFE

PRAKASH HATVALNE/APDecember 3, 1984: Victims on a Bhopal street

Felice C. Frankel and George M. Whitesides No Small Matter: Science on the Nanoscale

Felice C. Frankel and George M. Whitesides No Small Matter: Science on the NanoscalePhantoms…Faced with something unfamiliar, we are simultaneously curious and afraid. To remind us to becareful, we construct things that go bump in the night—phantoms, trolls, chain-saw movies.This field of shimmering light, with unrecognizeable shapes inside, could be anything; best to assumeit’s dangerous! (It is, in fact, a fountain playing over rocks; but no matter.) We treat new technologiesin the same way. At the beginnig, they are all dangerous: fire, the book, steam engines, geneticallyengineered bacteria, nanotechnology. But with enough familiarity, we ignore even truly dangerousones—nuclear weapons, ubiquitous surveillance, smoking, drinking, the sports channel on TV.

Last Century’sRisk challenge: How do we prevent human instincts causing more harm than good in a technology-driven world?

Science: on, cti on pr edi ati n, evalu tio e- rva d r O bse g an te stin Inde p en self d en -cor t an rec t d ing Evidence-based decisions and action s

Science: on, cti on pr edi ati nct n, evalu tio e- rva d r bse g an ins ti O stin es the te nce tak we do IndeS cie f w hat self p en -cor d en t an out o rec t ing d Evidence-based decisions and action s

Risk Science: Science that supports evidence- informed approaches to risk A systemanop ug h? is eh iatineatnc a proach to tvalu s g i But d addressing risk A means of separating risk-related decisions and actions from potentially harmful instinctive responses

Risk Science:In the 21st Century Coupling Communication Control

Coupling

Estimated change in sea surface acidity caused between the 1700s and the 1990s http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:WOA05_GLODAP_del_pH_AYool.png

Photo: Andy GuptaThe Colorado river running through Marble Canyon http://www.flickr.com/photos/77145662@N00/5014081890/

Aitor Escauriazahttp://www.flickr.com/photos/rotia/619256949/sizes/o/in/photostream/

Communication

http://www.neuroproductions.be/

One week’s Twitter conversations initiated by @boraz (Bora Zivkovic) http://socialcollider.net/

Last of 33 Chilean miners to be rescued. Washington Post

Control

Geoengineering Reﬂected sunlight Al2O3 Al 50 nm BaTiO3 10 µm Gravitational alignment Photophoretic levitation Hypothetical material Keith DW. 2010. Photophoretic levitation of engineered aerosols for geoengineering. PNAS 107(38): 16429-31.

Nanomedicine Martin Philbert and Raoul Kopelman

Synthetic biology Mycoplasma mycoides JCVI-syn1 J. Craig Venter Institute Gibson DG, Glass JI, Lartigue C, Noskov VN, Chuang R-Y, Algire MA, et al. 2010. Creation of a Bacterial Cell Controlled by a Chemically Synthesized Genome. Science 329(5987): 52-56.

Re-arrange Write Debug DIGITAL CODE DIGITAL DOMAIN Sequencing Synthesis DNA PHYSICAL DOMAIN Natural Selection Breeding Biotechnology Information Flow Concept: Drew Endy

Bayley H. 2010. Nanotechnology: Holes with an edge. Nature 467(7312): 164-165.

Sequencing the Human GenomeHuman Genome Project James Watson The near future? 1988 - 2001 2007 2013 13 years 2 months 3 minutes Science 291:5507, pp. 1304-1351, Nature, 1 June 2007. Nature, 6 February 2009. 2001. doi: 10.1126/science.1058040 doi:10.1038/news070528-10 doi:10.1038/news.2009.86

CommunicationCoupling ? Control

Five Pressure-Point Technologies: Synthetic biology Digitally designing “life” an d downloading it into real ity Geoengin Planet-wid eering e climate interventio n Bio-constr Viruses pro uction g rammed to build new m aterials Mac hBett ine-h er-t han u ma -hum an? n inteCognitive enhancers r f ac e Designer drugs for aspiring high achievers s

The 20th centuryRisk challenge: How do we prevent human instincts causing more harm than good in a technologically complex world?

The 21st centuryRisk challenge: How do we ensure evidence-informed, socially-responsive and proactive risk- decisions in a highly complex, interconnected and interdependent world?

Drivers of change: Complexity: Agents of harm are increasingly complex, and innovation cycle so fast that established linear, reactive approaches to addressing risk are failing Interconnectedness: Increasingly complex local and global relationships between decisions and their ramifications Distributed decision-making: Non-traditional decision-influencers and decision-makers are becoming increasingly influential, including citizens

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Douglas Adams. BBC, 1981

Andrew D. Maynard Director, Risk Science Center University of Michigan School of Public Health 1415 Washington Heights SPH I Room 1792 Ann Arbor, MI 48109 Email: maynarda@umich.eduContact: Hilda McDonald, Tel: 734-615-3050, Email: hildiris@umich.edu Risk Science Center: http://umriskcenter.org Blog: http://2020science.org Twitter: http://twitter.com/2020science

http://contemporaryartscenter.org	6802
http://2020science.org	256
http://umrscblogs.org	34
http://translate.googleusercontent.com	4
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com	3
https://wilmustaging.blackboard.com	1
http://search.mywebsearch.com	1
http://www.google.ae	1

Andrew Maynard: Where Do We Go From Here?

by Contemporary Arts Center on Dec 20, 2010

Accessibility

Categories

Tags

Upload Details

Usage Rights

8 Embeds 7,102

Statistics

Andrew Maynard: Where Do We Go From Here? — Webinar Transcript