Progress in Convergence : Wiley?Blackwell : 9781573316651 : 1573316652 : 01 Feb 2007 : Continued economic growth, human welfare, and national security depend upon constant technological progress; and the chief area for innovation in the coming years will be converging technologies, the synergistic combination of the "NBIC" fields: nanotechnology, biotechnology, information technology, and new technologies based in cognitive science. The significance of convergence was initially recognized in the first National Science Foundation conference on the societal implications of nanotechnology in 2000, which reported that the newly developed ability to measure, manipulate, and organize matter on the nanoscale was revolutionizing science and technology. This volume will mark a major step forward, for three reasons: (1) Enough is understood about convergence now to permit serious consideration of governance issues and the likely human consequences. (2) Among the many convergence-related resear