Envisioning a university-based School of Advanced Technology Transitions

While preparing for a keynote on advanced technology transitions this week, I revisited an old concept note exploring how the idea could help shape a school focused on tech, society and the future

Image: MidJourney

A couple of years ago I drafted up a concept note on what a university-based school focused on advanced technology transitions might look like.

The idea didn’t go anywhere at the time. But as I’m in the middle of preparing for a keynote lecture for the IEEE International Symposium on Consumer Technology next week with the title “The new science of advanced technology transitions”, I thought I’d dig it out it and take another look at it.

Interestingly, many of the ideas here are still highly relevant — probably more-so than they were back in 2022.*

Since then, the gap between what we teach and research around advanced technologies and the reality we’re living in has widened considerably Yet despite this widening gap, there are no concerted efforts to my knowledge to build academic and educational initiatives that address it.

Given that the note is highly relevant to my current work with the Arizona State University Future of Being Human initiative, and may be of interest to others grappling with how we develop critical new knowledge and skills around advanced technology transitions — as well as preparing our students for the future — I thought I’d post it here.

The following article is essentially the guts of the 2022 concept note, which was designed to spark a conversation around addressing a growing need. I’ve updated it here and there, but not a lot. It’s focused on an academic school, but this could easily be a college, or a department, or even a cross-university initiative.

This is very much a conversation starter, and as such, I’m interested to see where the conversation goes:

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A University-Based School of Advanced Technology Transitions

An exploratory concept for a university-based school (or department or college) that directly addresses the transdisciplinary research/scholarship, educational/learning programs, and thought leadership, that are needed to support and lead societally positive transitions toward technologically advanced futures.

Driving Question

What would a unique and ground-breaking university school look like that is focused on supporting the emergence of a positive, vibrant and promise-filled future in a world of increasingly powerful and transformative advanced technologies?

Need

• As a global society, we are at a scientific and technological tipping point in human history, where the futures we are creating — and how we are creating them — are departing in radical ways from past norms, trends, and expectations.

• Transformative new technologies like AI, quantum computing, advanced gene editing, brain computer interfaces, automation, and many others, are emerging at an accelerating rate. As they do, they are confounding conventional thinking on how to ensure new technologies benefit society.  

• As a result, the opportunities and challenges we face in transitioning to a technologically transformed future are night and day different from those we’ve faced in the past.

• These opportunities and challenges present near-unimaginable possibilities, as well as never-before experienced pitfalls. They are not navigable through conventional thinking, ideas, assumptions, education, and skills. Rather, creating the futures we collectively aspire to will require new thinking, new research, new knowledge and insights, new philosophies, new perspectives, new skills, new jobs, and new organizational approaches and structures.

• It will also require working together in new ways across areas of expertise and understanding, domains of practice, and diverse communities and sectors.

• And it will depend on a new generation of students graduating with the knowledge, insights, skills, and vision to pilot advanced technology transitions toward a future that is better than the past for as many people as possible.

• Yet in spite of growing needs and opportunities at all levels of society, there is a dearth of university-based programs that have the coherence, vision and responsiveness to support and guide successful advanced technology transitions.

To address this need we urgently need a new type of school: one that is focused on enabling society to successfully navigate advanced technology transitions that are unnavigable through conventional thinking and ideas.

Vision

A future where advanced technologies are harnessed to enrich and empower individuals, communities, and societies, while ensuring a vibrant, promise-filled, and equitable future for as many people as possible.

Mission

Research and Scholarship: Developing new and impactful thinking, knowledge, understanding, and insights, around enabling positive and transformative advanced technology transitions.

Thought leadership: Providing relevant, responsive, and transformative thought leadership around positive advanced technology transitions locally, nationally, and globally.

Learning and education: Equipping students, practitioners and others, with the knowledge, skills and insights necessary to guide organizations through coming advanced technology transitions.

Societal relevance and impact: Ensuring research, knowledge and insights are leveraged and catalyzed in ways that have relevance and impact at scale, across multiple sectors.

Structure and Implementation

Research and Scholarship

Members of the school will work at the nexus of different fields, disciplines, sectors, and realms of practice, to develop new theories, models, understanding, insights, and guidance around effectively navigating advanced technology transitions. They will spearhead the generation of new knowledge that is rigorous, use-inspired, future-focused, and unbounded by conventional thinking.

They will be expected to collaborate widely and be a part of a growing national and global community working on advanced technology transitions. Their work will both inform and guide external stakeholders while providing a deep foundation for learning, education, and outreach/engagement.

Research and scholarship within the school will span the specific (including focusing on specific technologies and domains) to the general (including models and theories that broadly address advanced technology transition). It will encourage transdisciplinary approaches to challenges, and draw on areas as diverse as philosophy, innovation theory, responsible innovation, technology ethics, political science, business, management, economics, communication, public engagement, and more.

Thought Leadership

Members of the school will actively connect their research and scholarship with stakeholders, from members of the public and local communities to public and private sector organizations. They will be supported and encouraged in being prominent voices guiding decision-making around advanced technology transitions nationally and globally.

Learning and Education

The school will include formal and informal education programs, with the latter including lifelong learning initiatives and support for informal/self-directed learning (for instance through museums, on digital platforms such as YouTube, and through the use of AI-based tools and platforms).

Degree Programs

The school will be built around a streamlined structure of interlocking degrees, with specific foci represented by tracks and specializations within degree programs.

Undergraduate

A BS in Advanced Technology Transitions, with specializations such as specific trends in technology innovation (e.g. cyber tech, quantum tech, AI, gene technologies, advanced manufacturing, automation etc.), societal dimensions of technology transitions (e.g. technology ethics, just and equitable technology transitions, responsible innovation, policy and governance etc.), and innovation dynamics (e.g. innovation theory and practice, entrepreneurialism, innovation within complex systems etc.). Core competencies will include practical skills necessary for job placements, soft skills necessary for career advancement, and a unique set of knowledge and skills focused on successfully navigating advanced technology transition.

Masters

A professional Masters in Advanced Technology Transitions, with specializations that may include emerging technologies, innovation theory and implementation, responsible innovation, public interest technology, technology governance and policy, and applied ethics.

PhD

A PhD in Advanced Technology Transitions that draws on multiple disciplines and forms of research and scholarship, while being grounded within the vision and mission of the school. The PhD structure should emphasize high quality and high impact research and scholarship that spans the spectrum from purely theoretical to highly applied. It should encourage and support novel approaches to generating new knowledge through working across and beyond established disciplinary areas and modalities. And it should value and support post-degree career pathways that lie outside of academia.

Societal Relevance

The school will be grounded in a commitment to service to society, and will recognize, elevate, and support activities across research and scholarship, thought-leadership, and learning/education, that empower stakeholders to make informed decisions as they navigate multiple forms of advanced technology transitions.

In this way, the school will take seriously the idea of serving as a guide or “pilot” for individuals, communities and organizations as they face technology transitions that demand radically new ways of thinking and acting if they are to be navigated successfully.

Faculty

The school’s faculty will draw from a broad range of disciplines and areas of expertise. They will be visionary, aligned with the school’s mission and focus, comfortable transcending disciplinary boundaries, creative, innovative, entrepreneurial, and committed to having societal impact while serving students and rewriting the rule book of how we collectively build a more vibrant, equitable, and promise-filled technology-based future.

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As I noted above, this was intended to be a conversation starter. What would you keep, what would you change, and what would you chuck out of the window and redesign from scratch as we collectively face a future where conventional ideas of what university schools, departments and colleges do and teach are likely to become increasingly irrelevant?

Let me know in the comments below!

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*Update: Looking through my notes, the original concept note dates back to November 2022, and was briefer than the one I used for this article. I’d forgotten that I fleshed out the concept further in February of this year — resulting in the document that was the basis of the article above. That said, the core of the concept is the same. As always, it’s hard to remember the genesis of stuff as you’re doodling, which is why it’s always good to pay attention to timestamps!