I'm sitting in work researching mobile internet technologies, when this thought hits me. Let me present a few examples for you to consider
Are we moving faster than we can control? Are we painting ourselves into a corner as we invent and discover more and more?
Should we be worried?
This random thought brought to you by the worry that I'm nearly 30 and haven't achieved anything of note
We have a lot to be proud of, actually. We've known about U-235 for more than 50 years and still haven't eradicated ourselves. Go us!
Basically, the day the first proto-human picked up a sharp stone and used it to cut a piece of meat off a carcass, our ancestors took the first step on a road to the modification of the environment by ourselves, for our own good (for varying definitions of good, of course). This anomaly in the fabric of the ecosystem has been tolerated so long as we didn't unbalance things too much.
However, anything Really Bad(tm) that we are likely to do to the planet will turn on us and cause our own extinction, or at least a great reduction in our numbers, so the system, from its end, is safe.
Species come and species go - our tenuous relationship with our own brainchildren is nature's way of ensuring that we don't outstay our welcome.
This is purely commonsense. I was watching the news yesterday, there was an item on how Canadian Members of Parliament used wireless technology to assist them in doing what they do--no different than any businesspeople.
What has the internet become? I have already written about the change from information superhighway to ecommerce.
Atomic power, once touted as being able to produce electricity too cheap to meter, threatens us with accidents--Three Mile Island, Chernobyl--with decommissioning costs. And even though U-235 has been around for more than 50 years, and so have we, is not to say that the threat of mutually assured destruction hasn't made us do things that really were out of our control--what was/is the arms race?
All technology will eventually be put to the use of threat. This seems to be a pathology built into our psyche. There is more money here than for curing disease, ending poverty, ensuring good jobs for all who can work.
All technology enslaves. We never see this clearly. We sure never want to admit it. Even all the high technology that permits the existence of Everything--as much as I like it--is beyond our ability to truly use it. Even though the administration here is benign, others use similar technology more malevolently.
We must always be on our guard. We must never take anything at face value.
Just because we can do something, doesn't mean that we should or must.
It's not technology that's the problem. Technology is just a tool, a means. It's the motive to use it for bad that's the problem. If we didn't have the desire to take from other people, to deny them freedom, to deny them life, we'd never have to worry.
The sad part is that there are still people who think world peace is a bad idea. Obviously, at least some people are not ready for this technology, and given access to it, would immediately attempt to remove other people, those with certain attributes, from the world.
At some point, an advance is going to arrive that, in a manner of speaking, will put a timer on us as a species. That once this advance arrives, we have a certain amount of time to make advances to either protect us against the eventual spread of this advance to people with bad motives, or to enlighten us, as a species, to the point where those motives disappear.
However, because of the progression of science and technology, we can't just decide to stop working on advances, because it would be impossible for everyone to agree not to do it - at best, you can convince the people with good motives to stop, leaving the dangerous ones to do it on their own, creating a near-certain doomsday scenario.
I think our only chance is to work to both increase the speed at which advances come, to make it more likely we can protect ourselves before the timer expires, and to work with other people, to try and get rid of the opinions, the thoughts, the beliefs, that would lead toward the misuse of the technology.
Personally, I think the advance that's going to start the timer is nanotechnology, and from what I've been hearing, we're looking at a ten to thirty year arrival time.
Alfred North Whitehead
Technology has always reshaped a socities value systems. What so scary now is that are humanity is now global and varied and is reacting directly to technology in completely different ways in different places. It is a truely unique time in history. The mid dawn of the information age has way bigger variables and is fucking scary.
It seems to me that "our" (humanity's) ability to use technology for good actually is keeping up with technology. Even if you count Chernobyl, nuclear power is less far less polluting on the global scale than the fossil fuel equivalents--and you'll note that nations around the world are working together to pay for the decommissioning of that plant, rather than allowing it to fester. Even the hydrogen bomb has sat unused for 50 years, something that hasn't happened with any other weapon in history.
The real danger comes if a small group of people can get access to extinction-level weaponry--say, a Stand-style superflu. That's the scary (and unpredictable) scenario. As long as a lot of people need to work together to immamentize the eschaton, we are relatively safe. But if a hundred people can wipe the rest of us out, we are probably going to be in big trouble.
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