At 10:54 PM -0500 3/15/00, Duncan Frissell wrote:
>At 04:38 PM 3/15/00 -0500, Trei, Peter wrote:
>>Bill thinks - and I think he may well be right - that we are approaching the
>>point where a single individual could build a lethal, virulent disease,
>>or (somewhat later) an unrestricted nanotech self-replicator. What then?
>
>My problem with the argument is that we were dealing with it on the
>extropian list in '92 and others were dealing with it long before
>that. The term "singularity" was applied to the case where change
>becomes a vertical asymptote (1/x). Novels like "Blood Music" have
>discussed it as well. Why did it take until 1998 for this to occur
>to Bill? Nuclear annihilation provided lots of fodder for the
>identical discussion in '50s SF and "The Shape of Things to Come"
>deals with it as well. That's what I meant by it being an old
>discussion.
This is exactly right. It's exasperating to see neo-journalists pick
up on recycled discussions as being revealed wisdom. Old beer in new
bottles.
Bill Joy has done some fine work, but he is no more insightful about
the future than various Nobel Prize-winning scientists were in the
50s, 60s, and 70s about nuclear war, one world governments, or
running out of resources.
No need to waste time on him.
BTW, far more detailed scenarios for nanotech general assemblers were
covered in exhaustive detail at the "Assembler Multitudes" fora every
two weeks in the early 90s. Organized by Ted Kaehler, one of the
original developers of Smalltalk, the gatherings were stimulating,
detailed, and thoughtful. We had about 15-25 regular participants,
and many specialists also dropped in. Eric Drexler, Mark Miller, Marc
Stiegler, Ralph Merkle, Howard Landeman, Markus Krummenacker, and
many others.
We even covered scenarios about attemping to stifle research...I was
overjoyed--no pun intended--to describe to them just how pointless
stifling research would be, because of strong crypto, data havens,
etc. It was at one of these meetings, in 1993, that I presented
BlackNet. I did this by literally soliciting members of the Assembler
Multitudes seminar to sell bootleg nanotech research, untraceably. At
the actual physical meeting, I revealed that I done this to
demonstrate the tip of the iceberg on such approaches.
Bill Joy's essay is just not very deep. As I said, old beer in new bottles.
--Tim May
--
---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:----
Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,
ComSec 3DES: 831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero
W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets,
"Cyphernomicon" | black markets, collapse of governments.
