Future of Being Human an Arizona State University initiative

Advanced technology transitions

Last updated 2026-08-07 · Markdown version

Every technological threshold humanity has crossed so far — fire, agriculture, print, steam, silicon — was crossed without a discipline for crossing it. Advanced technology transitions (ATT) is Andrew Maynard’s argument, first publicly laid out under that name in April 2023, that our luck with that approach has run out: transformative AI and other transformative technologies are now arriving faster than conventional problem-solving can absorb them, and navigating what comes next demands an integrated, transdisciplinary field that does not yet exist. The idea is load-bearing for everything else we do: Andrew describes the initiative as “explicitly focused on catalyzing conversations around advanced technology transitions” (andrewmaynard.net, 2026), and as of August 2026 the term names Andrew’s own title — Professor of Advanced Technology Transitions at ASU’s Thunderbird School of Global Management.

The argument

The argument starts with a pace inversion. For most of history, the consequences of new technologies unfolded slowly enough for trial and error to work — problems emerged, societies adjusted, and risks and benefits had time “to even out in the end,” to a degree. In the 2023 essay that named the field, Andrew argues this era is over: the pace of innovation is “beginning to vastly outstrip our ability to find solutions to emerging problems using conventional thinking and established approaches” (2023-04-12). He and Elizabeth Garbee had earlier formalized why trial and error stops working, as three vulnerability dimensions: tight coupling (consequences now propagate globally at near-light speed), latency (consequences surface on longer timescales than innovation cycles), and value mismatch (what markets reward diverges from what societies need) (with Garbee, 2019-08-13). A companion premise comes from complex-systems physics: technology-driven transitions can be abrupt, hard to predict, and irreversible, which makes “it always worked out before” structurally invalid reasoning — the past cannot predict the future across a tipping point (see Tipping points & broken symmetries).

The second premise is empirical, and biographical. Andrew spent two decades inside earlier transitions — co-chairing the US interagency Nanotechnology Environmental and Health Implications working group and advising the Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies — and reports that each wave of transformative technology “metaphorically re-invent[s] the wheel”: hard-won lessons exist but stay “buried in academic research, or within disconnected communities and initiatives,” while AI’s well-meaning advocates proceed “blissfully unaware of lessons learned from past technology transitions” (2023-04-12). With Sean Dudley, he made the case study explicit in a Nature Nanotechnology commentary (2023-10-02): nanotechnology’s relative success depended on transdisciplinary initiatives and broad stakeholder and public engagement — arts, humanities, and social sciences alongside the technical disciplines — while genetically modified organisms supplied the counter-example — in his words introducing the commentary, “a masterclass in how naivety, hubris, greed, and a lack of broad engagement, can create near-insurmountable roadblocks to progress.” AI development, they argue, is repeating the GMO pattern: driven by a small group of experts and companies confident they already understand enough.

Third: no existing field covers the gap. Science and technology studies, history, philosophy, technology ethics, responsible innovation, science policy, governance — each holds pieces of the puzzle, but Andrew, having worked across many of them, argues they lack “the breadth of vision and the integration of understanding” required (2024-03-31). Existing technology-transitions scholarship is either domain-bound (energy transitions) or theory loosely connected to practice (2023-09-25). Beneath this sits a framing error he considers dangerous: treating technology as something we do rather than something we are. Asking whether one is a techno-optimist or techno-pessimist, he argues, is like asking about oxygen — technology is constitutive of the species, and global challenges from climate to misinformation make no sense outside the long human–technology relationship, yet are rarely approached through it (2024-03-31).

The constructive move is to name and build the field: advanced technology transitions as “an integrated and transdisciplinary focus of research and scholarship, as well as a domain of thought leadership; an area of critical education, learning, and skills development; and a platform for mobilizing expertise for positive societal and economic impact” (2023-04-12). His 2023 submission to the US National Science Foundation’s TIP directorate roadmap made it concrete as a 16-item research agenda — general theories of transitions; failure modes of historic transitions; governance from public engagement and soft law to hard regulation; equity; foresight; misinformation; jobs; the arts and humanities as modulators of transitions; novel risk theory; responsive education (2023-09-25).

By 2024 the field had working frameworks. Extending the Pippard’s Ladder demonstration into a quadrant model — degrees of freedom crossed with mindset, assuming a closed planetary system and innovation that cannot simply be switched off — yields four strategy classes: Avoid tipping points, Adapt by engineering resilience that delays them, Extend the boundaries themselves (space, fusion, human enhancement), and Embrace — preparing to pass through irreversible transitions with minimum harm, necessary because technology-driven tipping points may be the norm rather than the exception in human existence (2024-08-18). A complementary threat/opportunity framework, built on risk innovation’s definition of risk as a threat to value, plots near- and long-term threats and opportunities, identifies pathways between them, and attaches mechanisms — checks and balances, responsible and principled innovation, multistakeholder engagement — that open good pathways and close bad ones (2024-08-25). The institutional corollary: transitions need “pilots” — institutions, communities, and individuals equipped to steer — sketched in his concept for a university-based School of Advanced Technology Transitions (concept note November 2022, published 2024-08-11; a conversation starter, not an existing school). Andrew flags his hedges throughout — the quadrant model is “admittedly simplistic,” the threat/opportunity framework “not quite a tool yet” — and offers ATT as a field to be built and tested, not one that exists.

Lineage

In his own words

“This wouldn’t matter so much if this was 30, 50, or even a hundred years ago, where the pace of innovation tended to allow enough time for things to even out in the end around risks and benefits (at least, to a certain extent). But this is 2023, and the pace of innovation is beginning to vastly outstrip our ability to find solutions to emerging problems using conventional thinking and established approaches.

Instead, we need unconventional approaches to unconventional challenges if we’re to successfully navigate advanced technology transitions.”

— Navigating Advanced Technology Transitions (AI-readable mirror), 2023-04-12

While there is existing scholarship on technology transitions (defined here as theories, frameworks, and practices, that support and enable economically and societally beneficial development, adoption, and use, of emerging technological capabilities), much of this is focused on specific domains (such as energy transitions), or theories that are only loosely connected to practice. At present, an integrated, transdisciplinary, and use-inspired approach to advanced technology transitions is lacking.”

— from his NSF TIP RFI comments, in Building a better future’s tough when you don’t know where you’re going (AI-readable mirror), 2023-09-25

A colleague recently used the term “pilot” in this context, and I think it’s a good one. We need pilots — whether they are institutions, communities, or individuals — that can guide us through perilous waters toward a technologically complex future where both people and planet flourish together.”

— We have a technology problem – and it probably isn’t what you think (AI-readable mirror), 2024-03-31

Engagement and reception

Beyond these records, this corpus has not yet compiled third-party citation or adoption evidence for the ATT framing itself; reception is a living page and this entry will be extended as verified items accrue.

Where to go deeper

Essays (canonical + AI-readable mirror):

Papers:

Related ideas: Tipping points & broken symmetries — the complex-systems argument ATT is built on · Risk innovation — risk as a threat to value, the engine of the threat/opportunity framework · Orphan risks — the risk landscape conventional approaches miss · The Foresight Catalyst model — piloting in practice.

Related corpus pages: What the initiative is — how ATT frames the initiative’s remit · Scholarship — where the ATT papers sit in the four-phase scholarly arc.