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
At 11:20 AM 3/15/00 -0500, Trei, Peter wrote:
I'd like to suggest that people take a serious look at Bill Joy's
"Why the future doesn't need us", the cover article
in the current Wired magazine. It can be found online at
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/8.04/joy.html.
I printed it out and
Bill Joy certainly has reputation capital to burn, but it is in the domain
of computer science (as he himself says) and not philosophical inquiry.
This article contains opinions and book reviews, not deep thinking into the
issues it merely suggests. It if *were* deep thinking, Wired would never
On Wed, 15 Mar 2000, Trei, Peter wrote:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/8.04/joy.html.
Briefly, he argues that current advances in biotech,
computers and robotics are creating such powerful
instrumentalities that either we'll make machines smarter
than ourselves, which will take over,
