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outset of the war, would have been effective in avoiding both the bomb–
ing and the "ethnic cleansing."
If
I were to try to formulate a general statement of the problem, it
would be that progress in any historical situation or social institution
involves technological development as it interacts with other features of
the human condition such as cultural habits, religious traditions, moral
standards, and psychological understanding. This implies that the tech–
nology will be open to good use, underuse, overuse, disuse, misuse,
abuse, and bad use. The counterclaim to this cautionary note has usu–
ally been the visionary view that the technological change will inevitably
result in a better scientific understanding of human nature with a
promise of the transformation of human motivation. The point of the
question is whether there is evidence that the rapid scale of technologi–
cal change sketched so wonderfully by Ray Kurzweil will bring with it
any grounds for refuting a belief in the relatively constant and unchang–
ing state of human nature through many centuries.
Ray
Kurzweil :
Let me say a couple of things. First of all, in terms of
cities and universities getting better or worse-as paradigms-they
may be reaching their peak or be past their prime. We do have new
forms of human discourse and communication emerging: the World
Wide Web has become a very powerful way of sharing information and
has supplemented the discourse that might have taken place exclusively
in universities. It's certainly spreading out the work environments so
people don't need to live in cities. But I didn't call the book
The History
of the Twenty-First Century.
As I said, the story hasn't been written yet,
and human nature is filled with glorious achievements as well as malev–
olent deceit. All of these qualities and tendencies are there; they affect
technology, and then technology amplifies human conduct. These are
the types of forces and technologies we'll see in the twenty-first century.
We will see their applications. We will get some greater insight into
human nature when we can understand it; we understand some of it
through psychology and neurobiology and so on. When we can actually
see the entity of the human brain and reverse-engineer the endocrine sys–
tem, we will have much greater insight into human nature and human
dysfunction. Hopefully, we'll apply that to constructive ends, but there
too one can certainly imagine malevolent scenarios.
Edward Rothstein:
David, I'd also like to respond . In science fiction,
there have always been these contrasting visions of things: one is the
utopian, the other, dystopian. In discussions of recent technology, this
