More then 100 MIT students, professors, and industry and government experts convened for a symposium on "Emerging Technologies: Recognizing Uncertainty and Assessing Implications." The April 12 event, sponsored by the Program on Emerging Technologies (PoET), was the Technology and Policy Program's annual symposium.

Professor Daniel Hastings, one of PoET's principal investigators, provided an overview of the problem of decision-making and uncertainty, explaining that the staggering rate of technological change has created a world of two cultures: a public that doesn't understand scientific advances, and scientists who don't understand public issues.

"We need integrative leaders that can transcend both sides of this divide," said Hastings, who is also co-director of the Engineering Systems Division (ESD). Fellow PoET principal investigators Kenneth Oye and Dava Newman added that collaboration has to take place early on, before a "lock-in" occurs between public policies and private strategies.

A version of this article appeared in MIT Tech Talk on April 28, 2004.

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