THE ASCENDANCE OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
S6S
interface with microelectronic circuits by transducing biochemical
events to and from the electronics. Simple networks such as the genetic
flip-flop lay the foundation for such far-out technologies.
Edward Rothstein: Thank
you to all our speakers . I will begin by asking
our panelists one or two questions. Ray's view of the exponential
growth of knowledge and technological power implies that very quickly
there will be a breakdown of boundaries and categories that we've come
to take for granted. Some of these categories have been discussed by
Gerald in his talk, namely, the distinction between the human and the
nonhuman, between something that we had once called the spirit and
the material world. In Ray's presentation, this transformation is
inevitable and will, almost by definition, come sooner than we think.
It
was more ambiguous to me in the historical discussion that Gerald pre–
sented whether or not the scientific view will in fact prevail. Sometimes,
in Gerald's account, reductionist thinkers have sought allies among
those with more religious views; at other times these parties have been
in opposition. I'm curious about this material, reductionist view, and
whether or not those old categories will remain intact. What importance
will such distinctions have? Will there still be a notion of something dis–
tinctively human-and quite different from the rest of the material
world? This is an issue that has come up specifically in discussing
research into the genome: should we put a halt to certain kinds of
inquiries because of their Faustian dangers?
Ray Kurzweil:
I think this is one way of bringing up the ethical dimen–
sion. Ethical debates about technology have increased. I've been a part
of a dialogue which started in a bar at Lake Tahoe three and a half years
ago with Bill Joy, a noted technologist. Because my first book in the
1980s was criticized for not focusing enough on the dangers of technol–
ogy, I decided to focus on that in
The Age of Spiritual Machines.
He
picked up on the downside scenarios that these technologies would
make possible. About eight months later he came out with an article, a
cover story in
Wired
magazine called "Why the Future Doesn't Need
Us," expounding on the dangers of genetics, nanotechnology, and robot–
ics. That set off a firestorm, like Soros's coming out against capitalism.
Being an arch-capitalist, he got a lot of attention. Bill Joy is an arch-tech–
nologist. He's the founder of Sun Microsystems; he invented Java and
other major technologies we use in the computer field. He was sounding
the alarm on the dangers of technology and has gotten a lot of attention.
At last count, there have been about ten thousand articles written about
