Dr. Adam Johns
ENGCMP 0200
August 29, 2008
Attempting to control the future of scientific development will undoubtedly have an adverse effect on the growth of technology. The question that must then be posed is this: Do we accept Bill Joy's statement that "to do the right thing only at last may be to lose the chance to do it at all."(14) Or do we accept progress as inevitable, and encourage growth at all cost? I lean towards allowing technology to reign free, with scientists behind the wheel rather than bureaucrats.
No one knows where technology will lead us. Joy admits he himself has a pessimistic view of the growth of technology when he admits "I believed that the rate of advances predicted by Moore's law might continue only until roughly 2010."(6) If even experts in a field do not know what the future holds, Joys hope that our species can agree on where we are headed and why seems naive.
Despite my desire for continued advancement of science, I agree with Joys statement on page 9 that "It is far easier to create destructive uses for nanotechnology than constructive ones." Bill Joys heart is in the right place, and I recognize that he is no Luddite. I would compare Joy's desire for a Council of Science to my own childhood love of communism. Where I once saw a system that could be oiled to deliver goods and services to the people fairly and consistently, I now see gears that cannot turn for all the red tape.
For the record, I may be less concerned with the future of humankind than Bill Joy. I would challenge anyone to answer the question, Are we more concerned with the human race, or the development of consciousness? If indeed the goal of life is expanding consciousness, and nano-humans are able to conceive of the health of our entire biosphere rather than individual states or nations(the limit of our consciousness), then we shouldn't we welcome our replacements?
1 comment:
I like your introduction, although it’s worth mentioning that scientists often are bureaucrats in a sense - research labs can be big, complicated organizations, and even managing a few grad students and postdocs can be a challenge.
“If even experts in a field do not know what the future holds, Joys hope that our species can agree on where we are headed and why seems naive.” I’m not sure how this follows – Joy is arguing that we need a well-defined set of principles to guide the development of future technology; in other words, he argues that we should make a deliberate attempt to control our future direction. Where is he naive - by asserting the desirability of control? By asserting that agreement of some sort is possible? This needed to be further developed.
“I would compare Joy's desire for a Council of Science to my own childhood love of communism.” This is a clever line, well written like everything here. But the metaphor needed some additional work, and here’s one thing you ignore: he understands that the red tape would do damage – but thinks that it’s a worthwhile price to pay.
“Are we more concerned with the human race, or the development of consciousness?” Another great line - you’ll like reading Silver’s book. Like your other great lines, though, this needed more work - because while some of the methods of extinction Joy envisioned might be a net positive for the development of consciousness, others wouldn’t be.
Overall: Well-written, interesting and compact, but short on evidence and with a tendency to use Joy as a straw man - you aren’t really engaging with his fear of extinction here, which is obviously the driving force behind his argument.
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