This had me wondering too. Mozambiquans need to worry about natural
disasters which they can't control. We have to worry about man-made ones
which we may not be able to control. Perhaps we still share a common
humanity?
Ed Weick
>
> THE VANCOUVER SUN MONDAY, MARCH 13, 2000
>
> WEB ENTREPRENEUR OFFERS GRIM VIEW OF HUMANITY+S EXTINCTION
>
> Sun Microsystem's top scientist writes in a
> provocative new article that technological advances
> could eventually threaten our existence.
>
> By Joel Garreau, Washington Post
>
> A respected creator of the Information Age has written an
> extraordinary critique of accelerating technological change in which
> he suggests that new technologies could cause -something like
> extinction- for humankind within the next two generations.
>
> The alarming prediction, intended to be provocative, is striking
> because it comes not from a critic of technology, but rather from a
> man who invented much of it: Bill Joy, chief scientist and
> co-founder of Sun Microsystems Inc., the leading Web technology
> manufacturer.
>
> Joy was an original co-chairman of a presidential commission
> on the future of information technology. His warning, he said in a
> telephone interview, is meant to be reminiscent of Albert Einstein's
> famous 1939 letter to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt alerting
> him to the possibility of an atomic bomb.
>
> In a 24-page article in Wired magazine that will appear on the
> Web Tuesday, Joy says he finds himself essentially agreeing, to his
> horror, with a core argument of the Unabomber, Theodore
> Kaczynski+that advanced technology poses a threat to the human
> species. -I have always believed that making software more reliable,
> given its many uses, will make the world a safer and better place,-
> Joy wrote in the article, which he worked on for six months. -If I
> were to come to believe the opposite, then I would be morally
> obligated to stop this work. I can now imagine that such a day may
> come.-
>
> Joy enjoys a level-headed reputation in the industry. -Nobody is
> more phlegmatic than Bill,- said Stewart Brand, an Internet
> pioneer. -He is the adult in the room.-
>
> Joy is disturbed by a suite of advances. He views as credible the
> prediction that by 2030, computers will be a million times more
> powerful than they are today. He respects the possibility that robots
> may exceed humans in intelligence, while being able to replicate
> themselves.
>
> He points to nanotechnology +the emerging science that seeks
> to create any desired object on an atom-by-atom basis +and agrees
> that it has the potential to allow inexpensive production of smart
> machines so small they could fit inside a blood vessel. Genetic
> technology, meanwhile, is inexorably generating the power to
> create new forms of life that could reproduce.
>
> What deeply worries him is that these technologies collectively
> create the ability to unleash self-replicating, mutating, mechanical or
> biological plagues. These would be -a replication attack in the
> physical world- comparable to the replication attack in the virtual
> world that recently caused the shutdowns of major commercial
> Web sites.
>
> -If you can let something loose that can make more copies of
> itself,- Joy said in a telephone interview, -it is very difficult to
> recall. It is as easy as eradicating all the mosquitoes: They are
> everywhere and make more of themselves. If attacked, they mutate
> and become immune.... That creates the possibility of empowering
> individuals for extreme evil. If we don't do anything, the risk is very
> high of one crazy person doing something very bad.-
>
> What further concerns him is the huge profits from any single
> advance that may seem beneficial in itself. -It is always hard to see
> the bigger impact while you are in the vortex of a change,- Joy
> wrote. -We have long been driven by the overarching desire to
> know that is the nature of science's quest, not stopping to notice
> that the progress to newer and more powerful technologies can
> take on a life of its own.-
>
> Finally, he argues, this threat to humanity is much greater than
> that of nuclear weapons because those are hard to build. By
> contrast, he says, these new technologies are not hard to come by.
> Therefore, he reasons, the problem will not be -rogue states, but
> rogue individuals.-
>
> Joy acknowledges that to some people, this may all sound like
> science fiction. 'After Y2K didn't happen,- he said, -some people
> will feel free to dismiss this, saying everything will work out.-
>
> Joy is less clear on how such a scenario could be prevented.
> When asked how he personally would stop this progression, he
> stumbled. -Sun has always struggled with being an ethical
> innovator,- he said. -We are tool builders. I'm trailing off here.-
>
> =======================================
