Beginning this month, a new appointment at Arizona State University’s Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law will initiate a project examining how emerging technologies affect human behavior.
An author and former reporter, Joel Garreau has been named the school’s Lincoln Professor of Law, Culture and Values. His appointment creates institutional framework for his research on The Prevail Project: Wise Governance for Challenging Futures. As director, Garreau and the project will take “an unprecedented look at the hinge in history at which the human race has arrived,” as indicated by a school press release. Such research will examine how modern technologies impact human development.
According to Garreau, “the critical issue, of course, is not technology, but where all this takes society.”
Of the project’s name, the term “prevail” refers to a successful co-evolution of society and such emerging technologies.
Said Paul Schiff Berman, dean of the law school: “[Garreau] will be a major addition to the Center for Law, Science, and Innovation, linking the extraordinary work in science law and policy being done here to the broader national and international policy audience. His new think tank promises to be at the cutting edge of thought about how our humanity can be maintained amidst rapidly growing scientific innovation.”
Indeed while the Prevail Project will be housed within the College of Law, its broad research scope speaks to an interdisciplinary nature. Therefore other facets of the university at large, such as the ASU Center for Nanotechnology in Society, will participate in the development of the project and its explorations.
