Cosmos 1.0: a multidimensional map of the emerging technology frontier

TL;DR

The Cosmos 1.0 dataset is introduced and a novel methodology for creating and mapping a universe of technologies, adjacent concepts, and entities is described, including the Technology Awareness Index, Generality Index, Deeptech, and Age of Tech Index.

Abstract

This paper introduces the Cosmos 1.0 dataset and describes a novel methodology for creating and mapping a universe of technologies, adjacent concepts, and entities. We utilise various source data that contain a rich diversity and breadth of contemporary knowledge. The Cosmos 1.0 dataset comprises 23,544 technology-adjacent entities (TA23k) with a hierarchical structure and eight categories of external indices. Each entity is represented by a 100-dimensional contextual embedding vector, which we use to assign it to seven thematic tech-clusters (TC7) and three meta tech-clusters (TC3). We manually verify 100 emerging technologies (ET100). This dataset is enriched with additional indices specifically developed to assess the landscape of emerging technologies, including the Technology Awareness Index, Generality Index, Deeptech, and Age of Tech Index. The dataset incorporates extensive metadata sourced from Wikipedia and linked data from third-party sources such as Crunchbase, Google Books, OpenAlex and Google Scholar, which are used to validate the relevance and accuracy of the constructed indices.

Figures (6)

• Figure 1: The repeatable workflow of creating and mapping the Cosmos 1.0 Dataset. It illustrates the simplified process of data collection, taxonomy, all features and potential usages of the Cosmos 1.0 dataset.
• Figure 2: Radial Tree Dendorgam of Cosmos 1.0 and ET100. (a) The full radial tree dendrogram with two grey dotted circles demonstrates three and seven are optimal numbers of clusters for the TA23k. We use colours to distinguish the three meta tech-clusters (TC3). (b) The curated radial tree dendrogram shows the technologies of ET100 and cluster names of TC7 and TC3 from bottom to top. The circle sizes of ET100 represent the normalised value of a technology index called Generality_Index. The theme tech-cluster "Data & Analytics" is frequently mentioned across Wikipedia articles than other theme tech-clusters.
• Figure 3: Example usage of features of Cosmos 1.0 (a) Technologies of ET100 in the theme tech-cluster "Autonomous Systems" are ranked by feature Generality_Index. (b) Early-stage and mature-stage technologies are filtered by the difference between features Age_of_Tech_Index and First_Pub_Year.
• Figure 4: Map of Cosmos 1.0 (n=23,544) with highlighted ET100. Utilising the dimensionality reduction and hierarchical clustering algorithms to visualise the 7 theme tech-clusters of the TA23k in the 2D map. The dots represent 23,544 technologies in Cosmos 1.0, and the stars represent the ET100, a manual selection of widely recognised 100 technologies. This map facilitates the observation of technological distributions. The interactive version of the map at https://xian-gong-elaine.github.io/Cosmos_1.0/.
• Figure 5: Top 30 technologies that are closest to the ET100 group of seven technologies "Renewable Energy Technologies" based on average cosine similarity. The higher-ranking entities demonstrate strong relevance. The entities highlighted in orange represent the technologies we observed for different potential subdomains of "Renewable Energy Technologies" in the space of solar and photovoltaic technologies.