This paper attempts to chart potential courses for federal regulation of emerging technologies in the United States, and its near-future implications for the development and proliferation of NBIC technologies in a transhumanist context. Drawing on significant regulatory actions by the FDA and FCC throughout the twentieth century, relevant historical regulatory trends are identified and extrapolated broadly across the next two to three decades. The importance of the NBIC paradigm is discussed in detail, alongside several examples of both current and potential NBIC technologies with transhumanist applications. It ultimately concludes that, in spite of recent congressional dysfunctions and lack of political will, the groundwork that has already been laid by major federal regulatory agencies well in advance of the wide commercialization of NBIC products is a promising sign for the eventual establishment of responsible and flexible regulatory schema for NBIC technologies.

This thesis examines the guidance that is being given to developing nations that are rapidly deploying information and communication technologies. It studied the African countries of Rwanda and Tunisia to draw lessons of the situation and potential methods of improving the situation. The thesis found that developing nations are often recommended to implement a conglomeration of existing rules and regulations found in other countries especially in European countries and in the United States. Developing countries are also recommended to create national CERTs, organizations of cybersecurity experts to coordinate a nation to respond to cyber incidents. The proposed rules and regulations are largely irrelevant for developing nations and the proposed missions of a CERT do not match the needs of those countries. In promoting better guidance, the thesis identifies and discusses several challenges. It finds policy makers in developing nations are aware of the cyber threat, and that the cyber threat is different and often smaller in less ICT developed nations even if they are using similar equipment and software. To help craft better recommendations, the thesis identifies the benefits of ICT especially in agriculture, education and government. These benefits are analyzed to determine whether they would be protected by current guidance and the analysis determines that protecting ICT use in government should be the priority. In crafting future guidance the challenges are that nations have differences in ICT architecture and ICT use, and developing nations have fewer resources but also they have different resources to use. Another such difference is the common lack of a private cybersecurity sector and different expectations of government. This thesis concludes with discussing unexpected results. The first is Rwandan policy makers desire good enough security and have a higher risk tolerance concerning cyber threats than is found in more developed nations. In addition, open source software can be a potential way to reduce the cost of cyberspace defense and this thesis makes an initial investigation. The lesson of the thesis is that cybersecurity strategy is not a one size fits all and so it must be customized for each country.

This research uses data collected from a university campus network via Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) monitoring and from the largest public BitTorrent tracker to characterize the extent of unauthorized transfers of copyrighted content using Peer-to-Peer (P2P) and to evaluate the effectiveness and limitations of DPI in detection of such activity, both to provide a perspective of how much copyright infringement happens using P2P and to inform those seeking to deploy DPI technology. Use of P2P and transfers of copyrighted content were widespread on campus. In Spring 2008, 40% of students living on campus were detected using a P2P protocol, 70% of which were observed attempting to transfer copyrighted material. In late 2010, we estimate that over 800 million copies of content were transferred globally using BitTorrent per day, with an estimated number of transferred songs 13.1 times greater than worldwide sales of songs, and estimated number of transferred movies 6.8 times greater than worldwide box-office sales and 16.4 times greater than U.S. DVD and Blu-ray sales. Most transfers were from a small number of very popular titles that were widely available for sale. We found no evidence that use of P2P to transfer content without violating copyright was common both on campus and global BitTorrent. This indicates that copyright law is violated frequently using P2P, and while we cannot quantify how P2P transfers translate to lost sales, it is reasonable to assume some sales are lost due to P2P. Focusing on effectiveness of DPI, after a couple weeks of monitoring DPI found up to 80% of detected P2P users attempting to transfer copyrighted content. In the short term, DPI could be effective to assess which network users transfer copyrighted content using P2P given some weeks of monitoring. However, limitations such as not being able to detect users of encrypted P2P can reduce DPIʼs effectiveness in the long term. Using behavioral classifiers that we implemented and that can detect encrypted BitTorrent from traffic summaries, we found students shifting from unencrypted to encrypted BitTorrent in the 2007-2008 academic year. If this trend continues, effectiveness of DPI for enforcement can be significantly hindered

Molecular nanotechnology has matured in the last thirty-nine years from the germ of an idea by a Nobel Laureate physicist to a rapidly growing international research site with more than $1 billion dollars in annual investment. Although only recently accepted as "mainstream" by the R&D community, nanotechnology research is now populated by eminent researchers in such fields as physics, chemistry, molecular biology, and computer science. Refereed journal articles appear with increasing frequency. The National Academy of Sciences, the RAND Corporation, the Department of Defense, and the National Science Foundation have recently issued reports calling for more structure and organization in nanotechnology research to improve synergy and research efficiency. Others insist that centralization would restrict independent approaches, one of which might be the best path to follow. This thesis addresses the following issues for the emerging field of molecular nanotechnology: • The field is extensive, growing, and in need of policy review. • The parties responsible for strategic science and technology policy in the United States as well as the current infrastructure for R&D funding are identified. • External evaluators have appraised our current policy and found it lacking in some key respects. • There are substantive issues that might be considered by American policymakers in assessing nanotechnology policy strategies. • We need to find a way to reconcile the sometimes conflicting aims of peer review and interdisciplinarity. • A workable framework for a national nanotechnology program is identified. / Master of Science

This paper analyzes the founding rate of bioengineering departments in the United States. It takes the density dependence model from organizational ecology literature as the starting point of the analysis. This model predicts that founding rates of organizational populations are driven by population density, which represents processes of legitimation and competition, and by external environmental factors. The analysis finds support for density dependence predictions about the effect of population density on the founding rate of bioengineering departments. Further, this analysis finds that funding from the Whitaker Foundation has a significant positive impact on the founding rate of departments. The density dependence model is based on assumptions that individual actors are limited in their ability to act strategically and that competition is diffuse. In light of these assumptions and the threat to validity that would be posed if they were incorrect, the paper presents a discussion of strategic interaction and direct competition. I use an acceleration analysis comparison to conduct an initial study of the existence of endogenous interaction within the population of bioengineering departments. I find evidence of endogenous interaction through a process of cumulative social learning.

This is a study of the design and development of an Organisational Software Package (OSP). It particularly focuses on the ambitions and supplier strategy of building a ‘generic software solution’ (i.e., a software system that in principle can be used by everyone). The study is located in the distinctive context provided by China, with its particular history and in a period of rapid economic reform. The starting point of this research is the apparent empirical and theoretical gap in the social study of Organisational Software Packages, in which the construction of standard solutions and the supply side of the technology's story have been largely overlooked. Moving beyond conventional information system design perspectives, this thesis draws upon concepts developed within the Social Shaping of Technology (SST) perspective, adopting an interdisciplinary approach to analyse the creation and evolution of OSPs, which enables us to address both the dynamism and continuity of these developments. In order to avoid the shortcomings of snapshot studies, we applied the concepts of ‘social learning’ and in particular the ‘biography’ of software package to examine the evolution of the OSP supply as the supplier developed its product and market strategy over a number of product cycles. Lastly, we applied Rip’s (Rip and Kemp 1998) technological transitional model to explore the influence of both the broad socio-economic context and institutional arrangements on the OSPs' development, as well as the contribution of these and related changes to changing the setting of technology. Methodologically, an extremely detailed longitudinal and contextual analysis has been undertaken through a qualitative historical case study of the evolution of a Chinese software package from 1998- 2005 in the context of China, triangulating different methods: interviewing, document analysis and participant observation. The empirical findings of this study firstly show that achieving the ‘generic’ is not an impossible goal but is rather an evolutionary process which is filled with struggles and tensions. OSP suppliers are forced to maintain a strategic balance between a range of contextual factors with technical, financial and social dimensions. Secondly, and perhaps the key contribution of this study, is the complex multi-locus and multi-layered account it offers of the OSP innovation process, according to which the supplier learns about the representation of users and use in both ‘local’ and ‘community design’ spaces with different approaches and foci through interaction with user organisations and other social players. The findings show that OSP suppliers are required to readjust their relationships with user organisations and establish cycles that move between seeking to achieve the economic imperative through standardisation and seeking to accommodate local user requirements. Thirdly, while this empirical study confirms some observations that have been made about packaged OSP production in western countries, it also reveals some specifically Chinese characters. These particular features of the development process which were identified in the Chinese PDM development were framed (using the terminology of Rip’s transitional model) by the unstable landscape and socio-technical regimes. Finally, this case study also throws light on the applicability of SST in developing countries and on the policy and practice of China’s future technology development.

No description available.

Information technology almost became the savior for Hong Kong in the process of recovering from the Asian financial crisis immediately after the Handover. The claims to establish and further the development of information technology were made against a certain perception of Hong Kong, in which the place in past decades had indulged in the wrong direction of labour-intensive, cut-throat production in the manufacturing industries and bubble-like speculation in the real-estate sector, and against a certain vision of the future, with more and more competition in the age of globalization, neo-liberal economies, and so on. This thesis demonstrates, firstly, how the governance of Hong Kong can be seen from the perspective of contingent articulations of dissimilar elements rather than any step-by-step progression along any necessary, objective historical path. Secondly through analyses of the governmental discourses and the business trajectory of Pacific-Century CyberWorks, the flagship group for Hong Kong’s “new-economy”, the thesis depicts the complexity and nexus of knowledge, governance, bureaucratic and financial considerations of and within the project of information technology in Hong Kong, and the mechanism by which this particular discourse is produced and circulated. Finally, comparing the discourse of Hong Kong’s early industralisation in the early 1950s, the thesis identifies the desire-creating workings of ideology in this particular discourse of information technology in Hong Kong. Also, through theoretical prisms, the thesis provides examples of how the government’s trumpeted notions of (and, probably, people’s faith in) laissez-faire, positive non-intervention are able to coexist in apparent harmony with the highly active participation of the Hong Kong SAR government in society and industry.

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This dissertation research project examines how contemporary academic bioethics in the U.S. balances the aspiration to guide biomedical research and practice with the need to become an institutionally legitimate influence in society. Since its inception three decades ago, to what extent has bioethics made biomedicine more socially accountable? At the same time, to what extent has bioethics been rendered a public-relations tool for academic and corporate biomedicine? This project investigates the co-production of the legitimacy and the logic of the academic field of bioethics by examining the activities of bioethicists in three professional arenas: the establishment of an academic bioethics unit, discourse on the legal liability of institutional review boards and health care ethics consultants, and the deliberations and recommendations of a federal bioethics commission.Bioethicists' efforts to legitimate their field are viewed as competition and collaboration with other professional groups to stake out an emblematic expertise, which is then tendered to various societal clients. A case study of an academic bioethics unit was conducted to reveal how the unit's efforts to secure material resources and organizational legitimacy shape the center's intellectual output, drawing on the unit's archival documents and interviews with the unit's director, faculty, staff, and graduate students. Discourse analysis was used to explore what anticipated legal liability reveals about the legitimacy of expertise claims and the shaping of those claims. The proceedings of the National Bioethics Advisory Commission related to the human stem cell research debate were used to examine the boundary-work conducted by the commission at the borders between science and ethics, and between ethics and public policy.The research described here shifts attention in the budding sociology of bioethics from clinical to academic bioethics, and highlights the institutional and power relationships amongst bioethics, biomedicine, and public policy. This study also contributes to the fields of higher education studies and science and technology studies, where ethics, and the relationship between legitimacy and expertise, have not been fully explored. The findings presented here provide useful insight into the challenges and opportunities bioethicists face in cultivating socially responsible biomedical science and technology.