This article comes from h+, of course. Mr. Orca (seriously?) posits that our future may be part nano-technology, part biology (genetic tampering included) and cognitive science and neurotechnology. Oh joy.
I'm not sure what the fascination with extended longevity and especially with introducing nano and other technology into our biological organism - it's like some kid's Seven of Nine fantasy.
I'm not in any way a fan of transhumanism - but I definitely share the concerns raised by Joy and Kurzweil last winter about published the genome of the 1918 influenza virus online. In fact, the potential risks of genetic tampering (and that is all we really are doing, is tampering, blindly, with things we scarcely understand) scare the shit out of me.
Anyway, here is the article:
Read the whole article.Nano-Bio-Info-Cogno: Paradigm for the Future
Date Published: February 12, 2010 |
Winter is typically flu season, and talk around the water cooler in 2009 has turned to the H1N1 virus, the so-called “swine flu.” Many wonder if it might be comparable to the 1918 influenza virus that caused the catastrophic and historic pandemic of 1918–1919. In 2005, in an act of random stupidity, the U.S. Department of health and human Services published the full genome of the 1918 influenza virus on the Internet in the GenBank database. Essentially, the blueprint to build a dangerous flu virus was made available to anyone with an Internet connection.
This prompted a scathing Op-Ed piece in the New York Times from an unlikely duo — Ray Kurzweil and Bill Joy. “This is extremely foolish,” they commented. “The genome is essentially the design of a weapon of mass destruction. No responsible scientist would advocate publishing precise designs for an atomic bomb, and in two ways revealing the sequence for the flu virus is even more dangerous.” Kurzweil and Joy went so far as to call for a “new Manhattan Project” to develop specific defenses against viral threats, whether natural or man-made.
Ray Kurzweil, of course, is well known to h+ readers as the author of the seminal book, The Singularity is Near, and more recently as a founder (with funding from Google and NASA Ames Research Center) of Singularity University. Bill Joy, cofounder and former Chief Scientist of Sun Microsystems, is known as a critic of Kurzweil’s technological optimism — but not necessarily his predictions. In a now-famous piece published in the April 2000 edition of Wired magazine entitled “Why the future doesn’t need us,” Joy suggested that our most powerful 21st century technologies — genetic engineering, nanotechnology, and robotics (GNR) – are threatening to make humans an endangered species. In 2003, Kurzweil responded to Joy and acknowledged, “Technology has always been a double-edged sword, empowering both our creative and our destructive natures. It has brought us longer and healthier lives, freedom from physical and mental drudgery, and many new creative possibilities. Yet it has also introduced new and salient dangers.”
That Kurzweil and Joy would team up to warn the public of the dangers of the “G” in “GNR” in their 2005 Op-Ed piece is commentary enough. Yet, the promise of the GNR technologies is clear even to Joy. “Each of these technologies also offers untold promise: The vision of near immortality that Kurzweil sees in his robot dreams drives us forward; genetic engineering may soon provide treatments, if not outright cures, for most diseases; and nanotechnology and nanomedicine can address yet more ills,” writes Joy. “Together they could significantly extend our average life span and improve the quality of our lives. Yet, with each of these technologies, a sequence of small, individually sensible advances leads to an accumulation of great power and, concomitantly, great danger.”
Much research has occurred since Kurzweil and Joy first brought broader public awareness of these emerging 21st-century technologies. Emerging — as well as converging — these technologies now include the GNR technologies plus cognitive science and neurotechnology: the newer formulation is Nano-Bio-Info-Cogno (NBIC). U.S. government studies now recognize that the convergence of the NBIC technologies can vastly “improve human performance over the next ten to twenty years.”
h+ contacted Professor Nick Bostrom of the James Martin 21st Century School at Oxford University to ask him about NBIC convergence as well as Joy’s concerns for the future of the human species. Professor Bostrom, also the director of the Future of Humanity Institute, confirmed the danger, but with some significant qualifications.
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