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Social Innovations for Development
- a Case for Biopolicy” BIOPOLICY SEMINAR 2004
SINCE 2000 ANNUAL biopolicy seminars have been organized by the
Sciences (KVA), and the Biotechnology Division of the Royal Swedish
Academy of Engineering Sciences (IVA). The events have been initiated
by the World Academy of Art and Science and they are administratively
supported by its Biofocus Foundation. In June 1979 a seminar entitled
”Social Innovations for Development” took place in
Stockholm. It noted that ”man has always adjusted to change
by innovating”, and that his inventions have been of three
kinds:
• adaptation and maintenance changes that constantly take
place,
• post-shock innovations made for more brutal adaptation
to
change made necessary by catastrophes, and
• anticipatory innovations.
The conference noted that since the rate of change was obviously
too great for spontaneous adaptive innovations to keep pace, the
way should be paved for anticipatory social innovations. After
25 years of slow progress we now have access to greatly improved
maps over the most dangerous demographic and economic fault lines
in society. However, we must now also ask ourselves if democracies
are doomed to wait for ”earthquakes” in order to draw
conclusions from those maps?
This question points towards a need for farsighted decision makers
who are well versed in technology assessment and in the strategic
management of both natural resources and human capital. With a
starting point in a few transdisciplinary topics, the biopolicy
seminars have consequently tried to explore how developments in
biology and information technology have opened new opportunities
for world-wide transdisciplinary cooperation.
THE 2004 SEMINAR will concentrate on ”Learning” and
on various challenges to personal integrity and privacy that can
be anticipated as a consequence of expected advances in the fields
just mentioned. Those advances are pinpointed in the course of
an Internet dialogue which started on August 24th as a follow-up
to the international conference ”Biotechnology, Possibilities,
Risks, Ethics and Society”, which was IVA:s contribution
to EC:s ”Science Generation Project”...
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