The next technological revolution. (Science).

EVEN SHORT-TERM technological prediction is a notoriously risky business: I vividly recall a number of articles appearing in the late sixties and early seventies bemoaning the absence of any major new marketable product on the horizon--the last such product was then colour television. Within a decade the computing-communications revolution had started and has altered society to an extent comparable with the changes brought about by the great agricultural revolution of the neolithic era and by the industrial revolution of 200 years ago. The development of information technology (IT) was largely unanticipated, although the basic scientific steps towards microelectronics, which is the technology underlying all IT, date from advances in solid-state electronics made in the late 1940s. This latter observation is significant, because, while the earlier technological innovations were based on empirical knowledge rather than systematic science, there is little doubt that technology now follows science. What is not obvious is which scientific advance will lead to important new technology.

The current situation is more straightforward, and most commentators agree that the next major technological developments will be in what is loosely termed biotechnology, which is mainly concerned with systematic manipulation of biological systems at the molecular level. These predictions are based on the fact that we are witnessing explosive advances in fundamental biology, leading to an understanding of biological processes at the most fundamental--that is, the molecular--level. This has already led to revolutionary new processes such as the manipulation of genetic material ("genetic engineering") and rational design of therapeutic agents based on the exact knowledge of their mode of action at the molecular level. In terms of Schumpeter's technology-driven long business cycles many now confidently predict that the next (sixth) wave following the current (fifth) wave based on IT will be driven by broadly defined biotechnology. In other words, biotechnology will almost certainly be the next technological revolution.

While it is not my intention to repeat the oft-told tale of the benefits of biotechnology, but rather to speculate about the economic, social and political consequences of them, it must be kept in mind that even the predictable developments alone are tremendously important, particularly in the fields of food production and medicine.

Perhaps the most certain development is a further increase in agricultural productivity, most obviously, but not solely due to genetically modified crops and farm animals. This, together with the increasingly certain flattening out of human population growth, should result in the final abolition of the food problem--the end of hunger. While this is hardly a burning issue in the obesity-plagued First World, hunger remains the basic preoccupation elsewhere, and its abolition will have major political and social consequences in the Third World. One predictable development is that the billions of people whose main preoccupation at present is to stay alive will have the time and energy to engage in more sophisticated economic activity--in other words, the developing world may finally develop, with incalculable consequences for humanity.

Equally important, certainly from the point of view of the developed world, is the coming increase in both longevity and quality of life. Even if one rejects excessive enthusiasm (for example Damien Broderick's in The Last Mortal Generation, 1999), it is generally agreed that the steady increase in life expectancy which we have observed over the last century is about to undergo a dramatic jump upwards. To put this into perspective, life expectancy at birth in Australia is likely to change rapidly from the present seventy-to-eighty years to ninety-to-one-hundred years, with older people becoming far more active than at present.

This development, in a less dramatic form, has been anticipated by demographers, economists and politicians for some time. It is usually portrayed as a threat, with exploding health budgets and hordes of useless oldsters being supported by a decreasing number of young workers. There are more sanguine views, pointing out that increases ...