Читать книгу Digital Universe - Peter B. Seel - Страница 26

In April 2000, Wired magazine published an article titled “Why the Future Doesn’t Need Us” written by Bill Joy, then the chief scientist of Sun Microsystems.²⁷ Drawing on dystopian visions of the future of genetics, robotics, and nanotechnology, he concluded that a future is feasible where robotic systems might take over management of all global systems (whether invited to or not). These networked systems, if given unrestricted opportunity to manage global affairs for the world’s human population, might decide that we are expendable competitors for the world’s resources, and terminate humanity. Joy’s Wired article was widely read and cited as an example of how advanced technology might evolve in a dystopian manner during the twenty-first century – without restrictions imposed by world governments.

Joy was attacked after publication of the article as a “neo-Luddite” – one who is opposed to modern technological change. The Luddites were a group of textile workers who attacked the first mechanized weaving looms in the new mills in the Midlands of England in 1811 as a way to forestall mechanization. They were not successful.²⁸ As one who co-founded Sun Microsystems in Silicon Valley and helped create TCP/IP, the fundamental communication protocol for the internet, it is erroneous to cast Bill Joy as a Luddite. In fact, it was due to his reputation as a computer scientist involved in the creation of the internet that people read and seriously considered his vision of possible dystopian futures. In the nineteenth century, coal miners in England and Wales took caged canaries with them deep into the pits to alert them of dangerous mine gases.²⁹ Joy provides a similar advance warning about the potential dangers to civilization of these twenty-first-century technologies.

The digital universe is fundamentally linked to the development of nanotechnology (it is essential for the continued extension of Moore’s law in the next two decades) and the computer-based analysis of complex genetic sequences. Information technology is also central to the evolution of artificial intelligence in robotic systems. However, I am hopeful that the same digital technologies that are supporting development in these areas will also facilitate the communication of the possible consequences, at least those we can foresee. Joy’s Wired article was widely disseminated over the internet (and is easily accessible on its website³⁰) and has led to a lively online debate of its premises.

Ironically, the digital universe that could lead to these possible dystopian aspects of the diffusion of information and communication technology is also the same system that can alert humanity to the dangers of unrestricted development. The canary in the modern “mines” of technology is information. The internet, to no one’s surprise, has emerged as a primary medium of communication about the implications of the development of technology. The work of related organizations such as the Long Now Foundation (focused on long-term thinking) and the Lifeboat Foundation (which has an influential board of scientists advising it on nanotechnology and biotechnology) is facilitated by the internet and, yes, email plays a central role in their communication.