A number of general themes are important for understanding the world as it now exists, and as providing context for engineering and managing technology today. These include the criticality of technology as a contributor to, and shaper of, accelerating economic, environmental, social, and cultural evolution; the increasing information density and complexity of the world as many physical domains are re-defined into information structures (e.g., genetics and bioengineering); and the growth of active information functionality within built environments (e.g., the “cognitive city” ...