I just spent the past week in Big Sky Montana participating in a five day conference on governing emerging technologies. There was far too much to begin to cover here, but I have to give kudos to the organizers David Guston and Rachel Ankeny for bringing together a broad group of speakers and contributors from across the globe. Three key emerging techs highlighted throughout the conference were neurotech, synthetic biology and nanotech.

Overall, it seems that the science and technology policy community (including industry) has the most comprehensive grasp of current and future emergent issues pertaining to nanotech. Developing dilemmas related to synthetic biology and its applications in biowarfare and implications for global security pose an ongoing, vexing problem for S&T policy. S&T policy issues related to advancing neurotechnologies seemed most fragmented with little coherence on what can or should be done with respect to the development and application of these technologies beyond therapy. Rightly so, many participants were quite alarmed with what could be on the neurotech horizon in terms of "perception shifting", neurolegal implications and the squelching of neurodiversity. Several participants, especially LSE's Scott Vrecko (who I met at last November's Neurosocieties conference in London), reminded the policy community to identity current issues in neuroscience rather than pondering "what ifs." That said, it was great to hear Natasha Schull's thoughts on the potential public policy implications of neuroeconomics research, George Khushf's presentation on the ethical implication of neural implants and Mike Chorost's pontifications on the future of neurodevice development.