Scientific American editors are right to ask if the hot new term “convergence” is just more jargon for the academy or an actual new Zeitgeist, a radically novel direction for research to be taking.
What I find most intriguing about this is how much the current trend toward convergence still isolates away from research parks the humanists: philosophers, poets, sociologists, rhetoricians, etc et al, are still not being invited into these clusters. At best, you might get a theoretical economist who happens to be great at making mathematical models.
“Convergence” is a jargony term at present that slightly confuses the real distinctions to be made between cross-disciplinarity, multidisciplinarity, and interdisciplinarity.
Transformative research will require, sooner or later, that scientists & engineers share their “convergent” research spaces with humanists as well as technicians.