Joël de Rosnay, (born 12 June 1937) is a Mauritius-born French scientific and writer, presently President of Biotics International, a consulting company specialized in the impact of new technologies on industries, and Special Advisor to the President of the Universcience (Cité des Sciences et de l'Industrie and Palais de la Découverte) of which he was Director of Forecasting and Assessment until June 2002. Biography From 1975 to 1985 he was Director of Research Applications at l'Institut Pasteur (the Pasteur Institute in Paris). Former research associate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the field of biology and computer graphics, he was successively Scientific Attaché to the French Embassy in the United States, and Scientific Director of European Enterprises Development Company (a venture capital group) from 1971 to 1975. As well as several reports, namely : Biotechnologies and Bio Industry (1979), an annex to the report Sciences de la vie et Société by Professors Gros, Jacob and Royer. He was also co-responsible for the report which led to the creation of CESTA (Centre d'Etudes des Systèmes et des Technologies Avancées / Center for the study of systems and advanced technologies, 1982). As author De Rosnay is particularly interested in advanced technologies and the applications of system theory; his concept of the macroscope, a "big picture" view of the globe and its residents, was published in 1975. On these subjects, he wrote : Le Macroscope (1975); Les Chemins de la Vie (The paths of life) (1983) and Le Cerveau Planétaire (The planetary brain) (1986). De Rosnay wrote for several years on new technologies for the economic magazine L'Expansion. He speaks on the same subject for Europe1, a radio network. De Rosnay is the author of several scientific books aimed at a wider public, such as: Les origines de la vie, (The origins of life) (1966); La malbouffe (the wrong food) (1979); La Révolution Biologique, (the biological revolution) (1982); Branchez-vous (Plug-in!), (1984), a book on personal computers; L'Aventure du Vivant (The adventure of life) (1988); L'avenir en direct (Live from the future) (1989); Les rendez-vous du Futur (Rendez-vous with the future) (1991); L'Homme Symbiotique, regards sur le 3eme millénaire (The Symbiotic Man, a look into the third millennium) (1995); La plus belle histoire du monde, (The most beautiful history of the World) with Yves Coppens, Hubert Reeves and Dominique Simonnet, Seuil, 1996; Une vie en plus with Jean-Louis Servan-Schreiber, François de Closets