29
de octubre del 2000
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29
de octubre del 2000
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By Mark Sommer* Will humans be able to control the consequences of genetic manipulation, nanotechnology and robotics? With this question, Bill Joy, one of the founders of the new economy, stunned his colleagues. BERKELEY - "We are on the cusp of the further perfection of extreme evil, an evil whose possibility spreads well beyond that which weapons of mass destruction bequeathed to the nation-states, on to a surprising and terrible empowerment of extreme individuals." Last spring, computer networking pioneer Bill Joy startled his high technology colleagues and alarmed a broader public with a seminal article in Wired, the premier magazine of the post-literate "digerati" generation. As co-founder of Sun Microsystems, one of the world's most successful software manufacturers, Joy is in a prime position to evaluate the future of leading-edge knowledge technologies. So his stern words of warning have exerted an impact not unlike those of Albert Einstein six decades ago when he spoke out against the destructive use of the atomic secrets he and his colleagues had revealed to the world. With an ethical sensibility all too rare in the today's tunnel vision high tech sector, Joy wrote in an article entitled, "Why the Future Doesn't Need Us:" "The 21st century technologies - genetics, nanotechnology, and robotics (GNR) - are so powerful that they can spawn whole new classes of accidents and abuses. Most dangerously, for the first time, these accidents and abuses are widely within the reach of individuals or small groups. They will not require large facilities or rare raw materials. Knowledge alone will enable the use of them. Thus we have the possibility not just of weapons of mass destruction but of knowledge-enabled mass destruction (KMD), this destructiveness hugely amplified by the power of self-replication. Joy's message has been greeted with consternation by most of his high-tech colleagues. In on-line "zines" and live debates, many dismiss as hyperbolic the notion that the devices they are designing could ever reproduce in such uncontrolled and self-destructive ways. But Joy's words have gained greater traction among non-technological intellectuals - and a broader public worldwide. Joy asserts that pursued in the absence of technical, legal or ethical constraints, self-replicating GNR technologies could create humanly devised "species" (biological and technological) that could end up dominating us: "With the prospect of human-level computing power in about 30 years...I may be working to create tools...that may replace our species...If we are downloaded into our technology, what are the chances that we will thereafter be ourselves or even human?" Viewed in light of the twentieth century's titanic struggle to constrain the use of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons - a struggle still not resolved - what can we expect of our ability to use the new-found powers of knowledge-based technologies with greater wisdom and self-restraint? Joy rejects the possibility of technical defenses against them as being "either undesirable or unachievable or both. The only realistic alternative I see is relinquishment: to limit development of the technologies that are too dangerous, by limiting our pursuit of certain kinds of knowledge." Though dismissed by many colleagues as a latter-day Cassandra, Joy is joined in his concerns by a younger cybernetic visionary, Jaron Lanier, who first coined the term, "virtual reality." Like Joy, Lanier critiques what he calls "cybernetic totalists" who visualize robotic technotopias. Unlike Joy, however, Lanier believes that computer software is ultimately too "brittle" to produce either a superhuman artificial intelligence or "Bill's version of The Terror." The danger he sees is not extinction but extreme separation between those with access to the new technologies - with their superior knowledge, intelligence, wealth, and genes - and a majority of humanity left bereft of such privileges. "With the technologies that exist today," he writes in the on-line 'zine, Edge, "the wealthy and the rest aren't that different; both bleed when pricked. But with the technology of the next 20 or 30 years they might become quite different indeed. Will the ultra-rich and the rest even be recognizable as the same species by the middle of the new century? "Nonsense, says George Dyson, a prominent critic of the critics. "What should reassure the technophiles, and unsettle the technophobes, is our world of lousy code. Because it is lousy code that is bringing the digital universe to life, rather than leaving us stuck in some programmed, deterministic universe devoid of life. It is that primordial soup of...crashing Windows and living-fossil operating systems that is driving the push towards the sort of fault-embracing template-based addressing that proved so successful in molecular biology, with us - and our computers - as one of its strangest results. Let us praise sloppy instructions, as we also praise the Lord." To judge by the results of the 20th century's weapons of mass destruction, the most likely outcome is neither our technophiles' fondest fantasies nor our humanists' most fearsome nightmares. We have neither blown ourselves away nor poisoned ourselves to death in the past half century, but we have continued to terrorize one another with arsenals of deadly toys. Yet Cassandras like Bill Joy and Jeron Lanier are essential elements in the self-balancing dynamic that prevents us all from plunging into the abyss. The argument between those who see salvation from human failings through better genetics, robotics, and cybernetics and those who believe they threaten our humanity is a recycling of the fears and fantasies that greeted the Industrial Revolution. What we most need at this juncture is a synthesis of the wiser elements in each worldview - technological advancement, yes, but in the service of a more humane culture based not on domination, separation and alienation from our human nature but on partnership, connection and compassion. * Mark Sommer is an author and columnist who directs the Mainstream Media Project, a U.S.-based effort to bring new voices to the broadcast media. Copyright © 2000 Tierramérica. Todos los Derechos Reservados |
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