Understanding Precision Medicine And AI Within The Life Cycle Of Technology Revolutions

Powerful new technologies have the potential to radically transform both science and society. In science, as Douglas Robertson describes in Phase Change (2003), a new technology like the microscope, the telescope, and the calculus can profoundly alter the questions we ask, and advance our ability to better understand nature. Society, visibly, can also be transformed by technology, as we've seen with examples ranging from the steam engine and the telegraph to automation and the internet. The catch is, this transformation doesn't occur overnight – far from it. The remarkable and often maddening aspect of innovation (as I've discussed here, here) is the exceptionally long time it takes between the time a technology is originally invented and the time when people figure out how to use it most effectively.