FW: New technologies threaten human extinction - Web entrepreneur (Vancouver Sun)

[Cordell, Arthur: #ECOM - COME]

This may be a straw in the wind, a growing reaction/questioning of just what
is being created.....

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From: Sid Shniad
Subject: New technologies threaten human extinction - Web entrepreneur
(Vancouver Sun)
Date: Monday, March 13, 2000 2:04PM

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.-

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