Module 12

Module 12

Are you scared about the future? After reading this article my mind opened up and thought about what it would be like in 2030 and let me tell you, I did feel a tinge of fear. Think about this for a second, this author -Bill Joy- is writing about the future within 15 years! This is not some unproportioned theory about what it will be like in the year 3000, this is practically now! It’s within our lifetime. These advances will affect us in the near future, and their effects aren’t always positive. What is going to happen in the future, is being formed right now.  Technology is advancing astronomically. GNR or Genetic engineering, Nanotechnology, and Robotics are making huge advancements.  Along with them comes questions about what is ethical and what is unethical and sometimes the answer isn’t clear.  Even up to this point, technology has not always been used for good. In the future, it seems like the more technology advances, the bigger the ethical questions are.  

Let’s focus on Genetic engineering for now. What good can genetic engineering do? Well, lots actually. Golden rice which was infused with Vitamin C has helped prevent malnourishment in developing countries (if the population can be socialized into buying Golden Rice).  Crop’s harvest has increased and the amount of pesticides used has decreased. It’s revolutionized cloning and helped with reproduction. It can create unique species of insects, plants, bacteria, and viruses. It’s useful when making cures for diseases and a whole lot more, but not all results come out for the better. Genetic engineering is capable of making terrible diseases, or what Joy wrote as “white plagues”. White plagues could be used to destroy the population in geographical areas or species with unique traits. Terrorists could potentially make some new kind of bacteria in a lab and use if for mass destruction.  What if that bacteria did something unexpected and killed everybody, instead of the selected few?  It’s difficult to predict every outcome in an experiment, even though there can be many predicted outcomes.  One missed prediction and oops earth’s human population is gone.

Nanotechnology is also very interesting. Nanotechnology is science, engineering, and technology conducted at the nanoscale, which is about 1 to 100 nanometers.  Because scientists can engineer on such a small scale, Joy argues that anything can be made, at a lower price.  The big question here is what about those atomic bombs?  When bigger countries are able to make them and war starts out. Are we all going to die over politics? The whole world will just blow up and boom! No more human life. We’re all gone, thanks to some scientist’s great idea of creating nuclear bombs and some crazy politician’s idea of ending a conflict.

Robotics are also making big changes.  The big question for them in the future is if humans should be able to control them, or should we let them make their own decisions.  If humans govern computers, it is inevitable that there will be problems.  We humans just aren’t as great as we’d like to think we are.  On the other hand, what would happen if we let computers govern themselves?  Could they think through the problem and always come out with the best answer?  What if computers realized just how flawed we humans are and decided to exterminate us? What would happen if computers could do everybody’s job?  The computers could work faster and more efficiently, there would be no need for humans to work.  We’d all be unemployed, and honestly I don’t think our lives would mean much if we didn’t work.  What would we do?  Computers would do research and advance themselves, even scientists would be laid off.   I know these questions posed may sound ridiculous, but at the same time, they don’t seem impossible. I believe it’s worth thinking about, even if it never gets to that point.  Which I really hope it will never get to that point. If it does get to that point (which I am not saying it will) we’d better be ready with some ideas.

I have one comment. While reading the article, any computer that I was on took forever to load, it was really annoying trying to read because it needed to load every few seconds.  Did anybody else have this problem? I thought it was also kind of distracting to have all those ads pop up while trying to read the article.