Found on CIO.com (of all places), a thoughtful and eloquent essay by Ray Kurzweil on the dangers posed by coming developments in genetic engineering, nanotechnology, and robotics: Promise and Peril of the 21st Century. Kurzweil uses the generic term GNR to refer to these technologies, the same term that Bill Joy used in his (in)famous screed, Why the Future Doesn't Need Us.
Kurzweil does an excellent job of explaining how the kinds of controls recommended by the Foresight Institute will be instrumental in preventing many of the dreaded nightmare nanotechnology scenarios. Moreover, he points out that our defense against abuse of these technologies comes from learning more about them, not from trying to prevent them from arriving. Money quote:
As an example in the nuclear arena, who would have guessed in 1945 that the next half-century would not see a single nuclear weapon (beyond the two dropped on Japan) used in anger? The offsetting factor to the inherent advantage of destructive over defensive technologies is the overwhelming balance of resources devoted to constructive and protective applications compared with malevolent ones.
This is an important analysis of how best to deal with very real challenges on the horizon. By all means, read the whole thing.
via Kurzweilai.net
Posted by Phil at October 8, 2003 10:11 AM | TrackBack