http://www.cluebot.com/article.pl?sid=00/10/30/2058257&mode=nested
Why Bill Joy is Elitist, Myopic, and Wrong
By Lizard
October 30, 2000
The smallpox vaccine will cause people to turn into cows. Trains
cannot be permitted to travel more than 20 miles per hour, or else
the passengers will asphyxiate. The atomic bomb will detonate the
entire atmosphere of Earth. The history of science is filled with
dire predictions of the consequences of technology, few of which
ever come true. (Granted, many of the more lofty hopes for
technology likewise fail to appear. Where's my personal helicopter
and laser gun, dammit?) But fear sells papers, which explains why
Bill Joy is given far more column-inches than he deserves. (Joy,
the cofounder of Sun Microsystems, spoke at a Camden
Technology conference over the weekend.)
The most distressing thing about his Luddite stand is the
undercurrent of elitism which flows by without criticism. The
common man must not be permitted access to the glorious fruits of
science, he says, because out there among the teeming masses
might be murderers and madmen. Well, we'd probably better make
sure they don't get their hands on fire and the wheel, too -- who
knows what might happen?
Joy is wrong on a wide range of levels, but his most egregious
error is that he has precisely the wrong solution to the alleged
problem. If he fears the misuse of biotech or nanotech, the last
thing that should be done is to turn these technologies into state
secrets, because that puts the knowledge right into the hands of
those with a history of using it for evil, namely, politicians.
If something can be done, it will be done, and all that suppressing
information will achieve is ensuring there is not ready access to
counter-measures to whatever devious plots Joy's hypothetical
supercriminals may devise. "Open sourcing" technology will all but
guarantee that for every uber-anthrax, there's an uber-vaccine; for
every bit of world-devouring grey-goo, there's something that will
eat it even faster. Locking technology away is no solution. If the
public knowledge base of the world has reached the point where
one scientist can make the next breakthrough, then there are
dozens of other scientists who can do likewise.
And, of course, who will watch the watchers? We've already seen
that secrets aren't: There are more leaks in the U.S. national
security apparatus than in a Russian space station. Better to
simply open it up and be done with it.
There is nothing dehumanizing about the probable merger of flesh
and silicon. It simply continues the path man began when the first
barely-erect hairy ape realized a fist holding a rock got you more
than a fist alone. From that moment on, we became defined by our
tools. There is no point and no purpose in trying to stop now.
Joy is fond of saying "the future doesn't need us." He is almost
completely wrong. The future needs most of us. It's just that the
future -- and the present -- doesn't need him.
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