Slashdot Mirror
Dyson On Grey Goo, Bioterrorism, and Censorship
Phronesis writes "In "The Future Needs Us," Freeman Dyson reviews Michael Crichton's Prey. After disposing of the bad science (The Reynolds number of nanobots 'the size of red blood cells' would limit their top speed to 2 mm/sec, which would make it hard for them to swarm or chase people; Solar power would provide no more than 20 nanowatts, which would not be sufficient for the activities the book describes; etc.) he turns to the more general theme of fearmongering about nanotechnology and biotechnology, comparing Prey to Nevil Shute's On the Beach ('Prey is not as good as On the Beach, but it is bringing us an equally important message')." Read on for a few more notes from the story, which makes an interesting followup to reader cybrpnk2's positive review of Prey .
"Dyson notes Joy's oddly prescient comment in April 2000 that
I think it is no exaggeration to say we are on the cusp of the further perfection of extreme evil, an evil whose possibility spreads well beyond that which weapons of mass destruction bequeathed to the nation-states, on to a surprising and terrible empowerment of extreme individuals.but objects to Joy's recommendation that we should 'relinquish pursuit of that knowledge...so dangerous that we judge it better that [it] never be available.' After a discussion of the actual history of biological warfare and bioterrorism, Dyson quotes Milton's Areopagitica in defense of intellectual and scientific freedom, concluding that 'Perhaps, after all, as we struggle to deal with the enduring problems of reconciling individual freedom with public safety, the wisdom of a great poet who died more than three hundred years ago may still be helpful.'"
Yes, the main page has been slow for me as well; it's probably not your admin.
You should post questions such as yours in the user-created discussions section.
This is plagiarized from an Amazon.com member review to get karma points - scroll down to the 6th review on that page - I think the comment should be moderated redundant
Freeman Dyson postulated the idea of a Dyson Sphere, which is basically a planet that was built as a shell surrounding a sun, using all the energy it radiates.
Also mentioned in the TNG episode Relics.
"TK-421, why aren't you at your post?"
A considerably better exploration of this topic, by a considerably better person, is found in C.S. Lewis' "The Abolition of Man".
In short, technology is not to blame in any way. People are to blame.
-Billy
Blood Music, by Greg Bear: One of the original grey goo stories. The short story version is somewhat different from the novel, both fascinating. Queen of Angels and Slant deal with nano/bio modifications to people.
Deception Well by Linda Nagata (also The Bohr Maker, and Vast, the prequel and sequel -- though DW reads fine on its own). Nano-infected planet holds keys to all kinds of mysterious stuff, including how this not-quite human person is able to live among the humans.
Limit of Vision by Linda Nagata. OK, I reallyreally like her stuff. This one is closer to present-time, and doesn't quite hit the grey goo phase... but avoids it narrowly. Not her best, but still very entertaining.
Truly, NanoSF is a bit passe. Blood Music dates from '86 (according to Amazon). Current cutting-edge SF tends more towards bioengineering, plagues, eco-crashes (Dust), or truly wonky time travel (Chronoliths).
Design for Use, not Construction!
Yep, it's called "strangelets". There was some concern that Brookhaven would produce them, IIRC. The whole Earth would collapse into strange matter. What fun. Fortunately, it's not so easy to do.
In the 40's there was concern for a while that a nuclear blast could ignite the atmosphere. Calculations showed that to be false as well, of course.
And, if you ever hear about the potential of producing black holes at the Large Hadron Collider, keep in mind 2 things:
(1) it's very unlikely
(2) they would evaporate quickly without hurting anyone - we know this because if a collider could make them, then cosmic rays are making them all the time just above the Earth and we're still here.
"Some science fiction writers have wrongly given me the credit for inventing the idea of an artificial biosphere. In fact, I took the idea from Olaf Stapledon, one of their own colleagues:
"This passage I found in a tattered copy of Stapledon's Star Maker which I picked up in Paddington Station in London in 1945."
I don't agree with everything in this article. But it is a very reasonable approach to considering a very broad topic in a very limited piece. Unfortunately, it isn't a sufficiently reactionary assertion of black-and-white dogmatism to appeal to this crowd.
While people pick their sides and play tug of war over the "issues," while politicians see every issue as leverage to maintain their positions of power, trading slogans for solutions and consistently getting too little done, while wealth interests continue to gaze intently at the quarterly earnings at the expense of any rational consideration of the future, we can assume that we will continue to impact the evolution of life on earth the old-fashioned way: blindly, dumbly, mutely.
It Is the Nature of Information to Transgress Artificial Boundaries