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The Emergence of Emerging Technologies

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What are the key „emerging technologies“ in the Tech War? I’ve previously noted that the concept itself only rose to prominence in the 1980s and has become an important frame through which these kinds of „special“, politically salient technologies are viewed. And looking at the literature, emerging technologies share certain attributes: „(i) radical novelty, (ii) relatively fast growth, (iii) coherence, (iv) prominent impact, and (v) uncertainty and ambiguity“ (Rotolo et al. 2015: 1828). And I love Carla Alvial-Palavicino’s argument „that emerging technologies only exist in the future“ (2015: 135). But which specific technologies show up in political narratives?

Sources

We looked at the following laws, reports, statements, and policy documents from the US, China and the EU for an overview:

These sources, alongside the Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s Critical Technologies Tracker, provide data on technologies that are deemed crucial for national security and well-being. Unfortunately, they do not use a uniform vocabulary and each has their own taxonomy, which made our comparison more complex than simply counting up mentions.

Technologies

The following groups of technologies showed up relatively frequently and were mentioned in prominent ways:

  • Artificial Intelligence
  • High Performance Computing
  • Quantum Computing
  • Semiconductors
  • Advanced Manufacturing
  • Nanotechnology
  • Biotechnology and Gene Technology
  • Autonomous Systems and Robotics
  • Hypersonics
  • Space Technology
  • Renewable Energy Generation and Storage

These eleven technologies thus represent something like the „population“ of cases for our project. We are currently undertaking a single pilot study of technological competition in the AI sector – will our results (which are still in the works) also apply to other cases? Let’s see.

References

Alvial-Palavicino, Carla (2015): The Future as Practice: A Framework to Understand Anticipation in Science and Technology. In: Tecnoscienza: Italian Journal of Science & Technology Studies 6(2): 135-172.

Rotolo, Daniele/Hicks, Diana/Martin, Ben R. (2015): What is an emerging technology? In: Research Policy 44(10): 1827-1843.

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