Disruptive technologies are those innovations that create new markets or replace old ones. Such a technology applies a new set of scientific, social, or economic conditions that ultimately, and often unexpectedly, displaces an existing market. The car replaced the horse and buggy; CDs replaced LP records and cassette tapes; online social networking such as email and Facebook now dominate social interactions once confined to mailing hardcopy letters. The areas of artificial intelligence, virtual reality, robotics, and biomechanics are exploding in their expansion and will continue to disrupt current technologies over the next decades, changing how we live, do business, and even what it means to be human. Catherine Asaro is a member of SIGMA, a think tank of futurists that consults for the US government and private industry on such developments. In January of 2012, Asaro was one of four futurists, along with Arlan Andrews, Kathleen Goonan, and Mark O'Green, who were hosted as invited speakers at the Global Competitiveness Forum in Saudi Arabia, an annual gathering of several thousand of the world’s political, financial, academic and intellectual leaders. During their panel, “Disruptive Technologies,” Asaro spoke on the innovations of AI, VR, robotics, and biomechanics. The seminar presented by Asaro at UMBC is an expansion of her talk that she has adapted for seminars at venues such as Georgetown University, the Philadelphia Science Fiction Society, and the Naval Observatory in Washington DC.

Location: Physics Bldg., Room 401