[6799] in cryptography@c2.net mail archive
Bill Joy suggests limits to freedom and research.
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Trei, Peter)
Wed Mar 15 19:54:42 2000
Message-ID: <D104150098E6D111B7830000F8D90AE8E62C9C@exna02.securitydynamics.com>
From: "Trei, Peter" <ptrei@rsasecurity.com>
To: "'cypherpunks@cyberpass.net'" <cypherpunks@cyberpass.net>,
"'cryptography@c2.net'" <cryptography@c2.net>,
"'dee3@torque.pothole.com'" <dee3@torque.pothole.com>
Cc: "Rajunas, Susan" <SRajunas@rsasecurity.com>,
"'trei@ziplink.net'" <trei@ziplink.net>
Date: Wed, 15 Mar 2000 11:20:27 -0500
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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.
Bill (one of the Great Old Men of the Internet, with vi, BSD,
Java, and Jini to his credit) it not a nut. He has reputation
capital to burn. He's talking about the possible imminent end
of the human species.
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, or some nut will unleash
a nanotech self-replicator or an engineered micro-organism
to doom the human race.
Bill suggests that perhaps we need to consider if there are
technological areas where we should not venture, because
of the potential danger of the knowledge.
This article is important, not only for what it says, but also
how people are going to use it. It is manna from heaven to
those who would further centralize and tighten control over
people, and will undoubtedly be cited by those who would
restrict privacy and anonymity.
This article is partially a dystopic response to Kurzweil's
"In the Age of Spiritual Machines", a book which I found
provocative, if flawed.
Peter Trei
