"bill_joy_-_why_does_the_future_not_need_us" - читать интересную книгу автора (Joy Bill)

nanotechnology. Stories of run-amok robots like the Borg, replicating or mutating
to escape from the ethical constraints imposed on them by their creators, are well
established in our science fiction books and movies. It is even possible that
self-replication may be more fundamental than we thought, and hence harder - or
even impossible - to control. A recent article by Stuart Kauffman inNature titled
"Self-Replication: Even Peptides Do It" discusses the discovery that a
32-amino-acid peptide can "autocatalyse its own synthesis." We don't know how
widespread this ability is, but Kauffman notes that it may hint at "a route to
self-reproducing molecular systems on a basis far wider than Watson-Crick
base-pairing."7

In truth, we have had in hand for years clear warnings of the dangers inherent in
widespread knowledge of GNR technologies - of the possibility of knowledge alone
enabling mass destruction. But these warnings haven't been widely publicized;
the public discussions have been clearly inadequate. There is no profit in
publicizing the dangers.

The nuclear, biological, and chemical (NBC) technologies used in 20th-century
weapons of mass destruction were and are largely military, developed in
government laboratories. In sharp contrast, the 21st-century GNR technologies
have clear commercial uses and are being developed almost exclusively by
corporate enterprises. In this age of triumphant commercialism, technology - with
science as its handmaiden - is delivering a series of almost magical inventions
that are the most phenomenally lucrative ever seen. We are aggressively pursuing
the promises of these new technologies within the now-unchallenged system of
global capitalism and its manifold financial incentives and competitive pressures.


This is the first moment in the history of our planet when any species, by its own voluntary actions, has become a
danger to itself - as well as to vast numbers of others.

It might be a familiar progression, transpiring on many worlds - a planet, newly formed, placidly revolves around
its star; life slowly forms; a kaleidoscopic procession of creatures evolves; intelligence emerges which, at least up
to a point, confers enormous survival value; and then technology is invented. It dawns on them that there are such
things as laws of Nature, that these laws can be revealed by experiment, and that knowledge of these laws can be
made both to save and to take lives, both on unprecedented scales. Science, they recognize, grants immense
powers. In a flash, they create world-altering contrivances. Some planetary civilizations see their way through,
place limits on what may and what must not be done, and safely pass through the time of perils. Others, not so
lucky or so prudent, perish.

That is Carl Sagan, writing in 1994, inPale Blue Dot, a book describing his vision
of the human future in space. I am only now realizing how deep his insight was,
and how sorely I miss, and will miss, his voice. For all its eloquence, Sagan's
contribution was not least that of simple common sense - an attribute that, along
with humility, many of the leading advocates of the 21st-century technologies
seem to lack.

I remember from my childhood that my grandmother was strongly against the
overuse of antibiotics. She had worked since before the first World War as a nurse
and had a commonsense attitude that taking antibiotics, unless they were