An Important Decision

Andre Cedeno
Dr. Adam Johns
ENGCMP 0200 - Seminar in Composition
August 27,2008
A Decision Must Be Made
As society continues to advance over the course of the next century there will be many new dilemmas that we will face. The biggest fear that Bill Joy and many of his peers in the scientific community discuss in the article “Why the Future Doesn’t Need Us”, is that genetics, nanotechnology and robotics(GNR) will cause the extinction of man kind. Bill Joy believes that in order to prevent this from happening society as a whole must come to a decision. As Bill says, “If we could agree as a species, what we wanted, where we were headed, and why, then we would make our future much less dangerous.”(14) I agree with this point, we must determine what is necessary for us to progress as a society and which facets of our lives can be simply left alone.

GNR technologies our a major segment of our lives that need to be focused on just as transportation, healthcare, and crime are. This means that the government should form one or multiple committees to focus on the regulation of GNR technologies. If the government took control of these three sciences many of the problems that Bill Joy discussed would be minimized if not completely eliminated. One such problem that Joy stated was that individuals could gain access to these materials and act as terrorists or cause major accidents. If the government went with a laissez faire approach to this issue there could be a situation much worse than the anthrax attacks of 2001 or even the envisioned pandemic that avian flu could cause. The government must step in and take control over the situation much like the did with chemical and biological weapons. The U.S. abandoned the idea of developing biological and chemical weapons several years ago. The development of GNRs also must be regulated by the government and the development of some parts of these technologies might even need to be banned. In the future the authorities in charge of policing these threats could have them as secure as treatable diseases that use to plague the country.

Another issue that Bill Joy brought up in the article was, “that scientists and engineers adopt a strong code of ethical conduct, resembling the Hippocratic Oath.” He also suggested that they even go as far as “whistle blowing.” If this were to occur scientists could go further into researching and developing GNR technologies because of the greater amount of trust and respect they would have from the public. This “oath” would also help to minimize capitalism driving what is produced. It would not create the world that Joy envisions where robotic industries would compete for resources, drive their prices up and eventually wipe out humans (3). With the ethical standards implemented scientists and engineers would in theory always do what is best for the public.

In the future the corporate world will also play a big role in the production of GNR technologies. Just as the government and individual scientists will be held responsible these large and small corporations must share the task of protecting the public as well. They can monitor what they produce and who it is given to much like they do in other industries. Some of these other industries include those of music and video games, where they have been able to control what age groups are able to buy certain products such as music with explicit content or mature games. The music industry has also been able to conquer one major part in the piracy of their products. They have input technology into their CDs that controls the amount of times the CD can be “burned”. All the minds in the corporate world have been successful in creating something to help stop the “replication” of one their products. By the time GNR technologies are more advanced this ant piracy technology could be transitioned to work for GNRs. This would prevent most individuals from reproducing the technologies for their own gain. With the amount of money these corporation collectively have they could invest in technology to control how their products are used and they could control who is able to get their hands on these products.

Between the corporate world, the government and the scientists who actually work on the GNR technologies many of the problems and fears associated with this science could be quelled. If these measures are taken beforehand the catastrophes that Bill Joy envisions will not occur. To save our society we must come to a decision on where we want to go with technology in the future. We could have everything we want an end up as they did in The Terminator where humans have to fight for survival or we could have what we need and end up in a similar situation to that of The Jetsons.