Cosmos 1.0: a multidimensional map of the emerging technology frontier

Abstract: This paper describes a novel methodology to map the universe of emerging technologies, utilising various source data that contain a rich diversity and breadth of contemporary knowledge to create a new dataset and multiple indices that provide new insights into these technologies. The Cosmos 1.0 dataset is a comprehensive collection of 23,544 technologies (ET23k) structured into a hierarchical model. Each technology is categorised into three meta clusters (ET3) and seven theme clusters (ET7) enhanced by 100-dimensional embedding vectors. Within the cosmos, we manually verify 100 emerging technologies called the 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. Moreover, we trained a classifier to identify whether they are developed "technology" or technology-related "terms".