Future risk communication

Science and technology have transformed risks and communications in the last century. Smallpox is gone, and polio is fading fast, thanks to vaccines. Communications, commerce and risk have gone global. Wireless networks, wideband communications and immersive interfaces are already in some homes. In the future, ubiquitous communications aids in the form of smart risk agents could tailor both the medium and the message, placing a risk in context for a specific person. By sensing physical risk characteristics and collecting and synthesizing risk information, weighted by judgments about the sources of that information, and conveying these in the media of choice, a smart agent or active technology could provide the ultimate risk communication. Yet theories of risk communication are in their infancy, with some emphasizing cognition and risk control, others social and affective responses that drive behavioral change. To create moral agents, we need to understand how our own and others’ values and goals arise and change in this increasingly information intense society, and how virtual realities can evoke or displace affect, cognition, and social context—that is, life as we know it. Otherwise, we may cross the divide from informed decision making to persuasion without reason.