FC: Bill Joy suggests limits to freedom and research

[Declan McCullagh <declan () wired com>]

**********

> From: "Trei, Peter" <ptrei () rsasecurity com>
> Subject: Bill Joy suggests limits to freedom and research.
> Date: Wed, 15 Mar 2000 11:20:27 -0500
>
> 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


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