Technological convergence

Technological convergence is the tendency for technologies that were originally unrelated to become more closely integrated and even unified as they develop and advance. For example, watches, telephones, television, computers, and social media platforms began as separate and mostly unrelated technologies, but have converged in many ways into an interrelated telecommunication, media, and technology industry. "Convergence is a deep integration of knowledge, tools, and all relevant activities of human activity for a common goal, to allow society to answer new questions to change the respective physical or social ecosystem. Such changes in the respective ecosystem open new trends, pathways, and opportunities in the following divergent phase of the process". Siddhartha Menon defines convergence as integration and digitalization. Integration, here, is defined as "a process of transformation measure by the degree to which diverse media such as phone, data broadcast and information technology infrastructures are combined into a single seamless all purpose network architecture platform". Digitalization is not so much defined by its physical infrastructure, but by the content or the medium. Jan van Dijk suggests that "digitalization means breaking down signals into bytes consisting of ones and zeros". Convergence is defined by Blackman (1998) as a trend in the evolution of technology services and industry structures. Convergence is later defined more specifically as the coming together of telecommunications, computing and broadcasting into a single digital bit-stream. Mueller stands against the statement that convergence is really a takeover of all forms of media by one technology: digital computers. Some acronyms for converging scientific or technological fields include: NBIC (Nanotechnology, Biotechnology, Information technology and Cognitive science) GNR (Genetics, Nanotechnology and Robotics) GRIN (Genetics, Robotics, Information, and Nano processes) GRAIN (Genetics, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, and Nanotechnology) BANG (Bits, Atoms, Neurons, Genes) Bioconvergence A 2010 citation analysis of patent data shows that biomedical devices are strongly connected to computing and mobile telecommunications, and that molecular bioengineering is strongly connected to several IT fields.