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Deus Ex Writer Discusses 'Dangerous Technology'
Dan Weaver writes "One of the writers for the exceptionally good action RPG Deus Ex has authored a rather thought-provoking Salon article on the Bill-Joy theme of dangers posed by emergent technologies and the difficulties that police states (both pleasant and not-so-pleasant) encounter in dealing with them. In the light of revelations about China's tardiness and confusion in addressing the SARS epidemic, this article is particularly timely."
What's a pleasant police state?
Here's a question that I'm mulling over as a result of reading the synopsis of this article. With all the literary and cinematic works that have been made which deal with a Big Brother-like state [for lack of a shorter term], why is it that the governments of the world are still able to move in the directions outlined in those works? It seems like no matter how embedded in our culture the idea that certain traits of governments are bad and that we must rally against them, these traits continue to crop up. Consider this, has the U.S. become more or less like the vision of 1984 since publication?
I hate liberals. If you are a liberal, do not reply.
Take this article with a grain of salt.
We are talking about a good science fictional game writer (that helped write a game about conspiracy theories, and a terrible future), writing about conspiracy theories and a terrible future.
I'm sure he has insight, but he also has an active imagination (not necessarily a bad thing, but, like I said, take it with a grain of salt).
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
Mankind has been producing dangerous technology since we first learned to bang sticks and stones together. Responsible usage and control have worked for us so far.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
the term for "1984" style books is Negative Utopia. And besides, i think 1984 wasn't really all that good of a negative utopia...it focused more on brutal police states that were becoming big at the time, but have little relevence to non-3rd world countries this day in age. Brave New World, OTOH, might be a better indication of were we are heading.
click me
Anyone who thinks the US is a true "police state" is automatically an intellectually devoid overreactionary. At least you didn't throw in "Nazi."
"Sufferin' succotash."
I'd say nuclear weapons is a technology that's inherently dangerous.
I agree. A much better example is that the USSR was pretty comfy for Communist Party officials, and Nazi Germany was plenty comfy for blue eyed blonds.
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
THey reduce rights a bit at a time, in a kneejerk response to something, and you never get them back, because anyone who tries to roll it back gets accused of being immoral, or encouraging crime.
The stupidity comes in because even when you point it out, people say that it dosent affect me, or have been brainwashed enough so that they prefer the new way, same as how people follow religion, even though you can point out where its wrong..
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
Uhm. . . SARS is just a nasty pneumonia. People are acting like it's an aerosol form of AIDS or Ebola and that everybody who gets it inevitably dies. But in fact, it's already been well reported that most people who get SARS recover in a few weeks.
I don't think you can compare a nasty flu strain to Chernobyl. The hype is because everybody was waiting to find out it had something to do with Saddam and at this point it's obvious that it doesn't and that Bush's whole cabinet is full of paranoid maniacs who are prepared to kill over rumors.
Good thing they give the troops amphetamines too. I'm sure they're shooting responsibly. Reuters would tell you if they were just shooting like mad at . . . oh nevermind.
Anyone who hasn't figured out that the United States is a police state just hasn't been paying attention. This is really not a matter of opinion. The fact is that the U.S. has a larger percentage of its population in prison than any other nation in the world. There are two possible explanations for this circumstance:
One: we live in a police state.
Two: Americans are more likely to be rotten scurrilous criminals than the citizens of other countries.
I believe the former to be the case. If you believe the latter, why don't you pack up your anti-American sentiments and move to France?
Seriously, it's possible that both explanations are true. But it is highly unlikely that neither explanation is true, because if so, why are so many Americans in prison?
The third option is that the police system is superior, and thus catches a higher percentage of dangerous criminals...
Not saying that is the case, but it IS another possible explanation
ASCII stupid question, get a stupid ANSI
I don't know if it's because of poor people not having many alternatives to crime, historical reasons, more open borders (criminals probably move more often) or because it's such a damn big place (hard to control and plan). (-: Go check some criminologist researchers, or something, don't discuss it with computer nerds like us... :-)
Don't worry about USA being "special" in this way -- that kind of problems are probably coming to Europe, too... :-(
Karma: Excellent (My Karma? I wish...:-( )
Stopping the access to the technology would require such things as destroying the internet and other worldwide mass-communications. Essentially, the technology won't go away. Police states are never 100% effective, which means that as soon as a technology like, say, bioweapons or antimatter ends up in the hands of average people, if someone has a motivation to use it, they will.
The only way to stop this threat is to stop the motivation. Secure people generally do not commit crimes. If you have nothing to fear (poverty, hate crimes, etc) then you will be less likely to do these things. As the ability of individuals to secure weapons of mass destruction increases, we have to start thinking about making our society more content.
Hardware, software, and blinking lights!
If that isn't a police state, I don't know what is...
Dr. Gatling invented the machine gun because he thought that its horrible efficiency would be a deterent to war -- the c. 1850s equivalent to the nuclear bomb.
Laws enacted, and in the process of being enacted since 9-11, have and are turning America toward police-statehood.
Detention without trial; without access to lawyers. Mass surveillance measures being created. The "Material Witness" laws being subverted...
And America is not alone, The UK is also undergoing it's own particular form of Big Brother transformation.
Just don't kid yourself it's not happening.
Little by little, it is.
One of the defining characteristics of a police state (though I'm no expert on the subject, by any means) to my mind, is the mass surveillance, monitoring, cataloging and tracking of the citizenry, for no real good reason.
The Stazi used this means extensively, and the emergence of it in the US, UK, and elsewhere, seems to indicate (to me at least) that the people in charge, are moist in their underwear at the thought of being able to know who you are, where you are, where you've been, where you're going, who you know, who you've associated with, who you've talked to, what you've read/listened to/viewed, who your relatives are, who you care about, what you care about, etc. (the etc. might be a little redundant at this point.)
I don't care what they need it for, whether to stop terrorists/crime/benefit fraud or whtever, on a personal level, that makes anyone who opposes me in any way, in any kind of dispute, whether because I'm fighting the building of houses on allotments, or the re-development of public land, or some bogus council activity, right up to fighting the government in court, a much greater threat than they have any right to be in a society that is not a police state.
That gives them the power to lean on me in ways that they could not, if they minded their own business, and got on with what they are supposed to be doing: representing my own and other common people's interests.
It gives them immense power over the populace that they are supposed to serve.
It isn't fully formed yet, but the Big brother Beast is growing in the womb; limbs and features, already visible.
Police State?
Maybe not today, but someday, soon, and perhaps for the rest of your life.
On a side note, two things: The US has banned the burning of crosses [in public at least] as constituting racial harassment (the term used was somewhat different, but I forget, just having heard it on the radio.) maybe the Nazi/Jew thing will be dealt with in the same manner, in the future.
And, Pharmboy, you said, "Perhaps if other countries would simply rise up and kill their own butcherous leaders, we wouldnt have to."
I know it's like shooting fish in a barrel, and a pretty easy riposte, but...
...maybe they wouldn't have to rise up, if the US (and other developed, Northern Bloc countries) didn't enable, arm and support their butcherous leaders in the bloody first place!
Corporation, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility. - Ambrose Bierce
"A state in which the government exercises rigid and repressive controls over the social, economic, and political life of the people, especially by means of a secret police force."
Above is the definition of police state. Sorry, the USA doesn't fit that description. Your observation that a lot of people are in jail could be easily tied to our strong economy.
Anyone who thinks the US is a true "police state" is automatically an intellectually devoid overreactionary.
Well now, that depends on what you think the minimum qualifications for a police state are.
Right now the government can come and kidnap you, then imprison you indefinitely without any recourse to the court system and in complete violation of the U.S. Constitution. I use the word 'kidnap' because they don't even have to arrest you; all they have to do is declare that you're a 'material witness' to some unspecified crime.
That's it. Piss someone off in power and away you go, with no chance of regaining your freedom until those in power choose to let you go.
How anyone can see this as anything but a characteristic of a police state is beyond me. Guess your definition of 'freedom' allows you to overlook those kinds of abuses - so long as they don't happen to you, eh?
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
For all the paranoia about stuff like SARS, I don't think Antarctic researchers or some guy who lives in a shack in Montana is going to catch it.
Flesh eating nanobots? You darn well know there's going to be plenty of pockets of people who will microwave to death, any nanobots that get within 50 meters of them. Maybe they're nuts for not trusting the tech, just as they still don't want flouridation in their water. But long after the nanobot plague has ravaged the rest of humanity, they will still be around and they'll grin toothlessly at the thought that some guy said they were doomed. Their precious bodily fluids will remain pure.
And it's not just a luddite thing. Even if the nanobots eat Joe Schmoe's flesh, they won't get Jane Schmoe, because her transhumanist polymer flesh isn't even compatable with the nanobots. Her defense isn't so much out of deliberate design, but just due to having different weaknesses.
A lot of people didn't catch ILOVEYOU because they weren't dumb enough to run a program that treats data as code. But a lot of people didn't catch Code Red, not because their web server was somehow immune to buffer overflows, but because their web server was just different.
Ebola schmebola. How are people going to catch Ebola from their cow-orkers if they never even meet except over a video-phone? How is my phone going to catch your phone virus if it exploits a mere implementation detail? You think we'll all have the same stuff or be in the same places or do the same things? "One world, one web, one program?" That'll be the day! We don't all want the same things! You might get a lot of us but you'll never get us all.
Diversify, spread out, and compartmentalize. Take that to the extreme, and you can even survive Death Stars.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
"Of course the people don't want war. But after all, it's the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it's always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it's a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger."
-- Herman Goering at the Nuremberg trials
Why the hell is this moderated a troll? Get a clue, moderators. This quote is trying to make a point, and a damn good one.
While I am not about to jump on the "America is a police state!" bandwagon, it is unfortunately very true that someone who knows how to work the system, or has a great deal of charisma, or both, can often bring people of a country around to a way of thinking that, in the long run, can prove disastrous, especially in times of crisis, whether real or perceived.
This can be linked to the discussion at hand. One could, in a way, consider the current ease at which people can communicate with each other a "dangerous technology", in that someone able to mold human emotions and human will the way Hitler could would be able to reach millions of people very quickly and very easily.
At the same time, this goes both ways. The same technology has fostered a sense of openess that has lead to the formation of several subcultures that value openness to the point where the people that tend to become the de-facto leaders that people look up to tend to get there by passing a sort of unofficial peer review. So perhaps Goering's statement does not ring as true today as it once did, but to ignore that danger and become complacent is to fail to learn from history and thus be doomed to repeat it. This is why when the US Congress started passing legislation that infringed on American citizens' rights, I was very happy when not everyone simply accepted this as necessary and actually spoke out against it.
So someone mod the parent up a few points.
Karma: Frotzed (mostly due to the Frobozz Magic Karma Company)
What is interesting about this is not whether our societies are getting more or less totalitarian. Tyrants have been around for a long time (at least 10000 years).
What is more interesting is the growing perception that the society is becoming more totalitarian. This is part of a global paradigm shift of unprecidented proportions and speed.
To give an example which has been much discussed, the war in Vietnam was going on for years before there was significant protest. With this war, protest started before it even began.
I am not interested in arguing about whether the protest is right. What is interesting about it is its magnitude and scale, which is historically unprecidented. Whether or not the political situation is actually getting worse, the fact is that people have an expectation that it get better. They expect our society to conform more to ideals of peace and freedom. When it does not, they react with outrage. Witness all the ranting about 1984 on slashdot, for example.
What this means is that the expectation of peace and freedom is increasing very rapidly. This is part of a much deeper paradigm shift, which is questioning deep, underlying values of our culture which haven't been seriously questioned since the time of Jesus. The idea that it is right for Man to conquor and rule the world by force is being questioned, by many people.
In my view, this paradigm shift is the only hope for our species. As the article points out, distructive tech is advancing rapidly, and poses new and even greater dangers of extinction of the species (which has already been a serious threat for some time). If we continue with our old paradigm, if we continue unchecked expansion and destruction, we probably won't last long.
But the tide is turning. A new paradigm is emerging. You can mock it if you like (and many of the die-hards of the old paradigm do), but it is spreading like wildfire, and there is a chance, just a slim chance, that we might be able to pull back from the precipice before it is too late.
All distinctions are arbitrary.
Try the environmental threats that six billion people pose to our long-term welfare. From ozone depletion, freshwater pollution, global warming, species depletion, unchecked development, these are far more tangible than out-of-control grey goo.
Bill Joy gets to look smart and visionary talking about science fiction fantasies that we read and play, but the real dangers to humanity are the good ol ones that people have been harping about for years.
Hey, I'm just your average shit and piss factory.
All of it? I think it's pretty terrorizing to the populace to think that, for growing a plant you can have your house and car taken from you.
And the police befriend people and then prosecute them. So it terrorizes the populace into being afraid of their friends.
We proved prohibition doesn't work back in the 1920's. Tactics are getting scarier, even raiding shops that sell certain pipes which can be used to smoke anything, including tobacco. As another poster said, Walmart sells tobacco pipes but you didn't see them raiding Walmart, did you?
That's selective enforcement; I believe that's another mark of a police state. I'll close with a quote from Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged":
I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.
If growing a plant is illegal, then you should be arrested.
So-called victemless crimes like the above simply underscore the OP's point. As as been said, you can't rule innocemt men. When a government passes laws protecting one from oneself, I see it as a sign of oppresive government.
By the way I'm not just talking about Prohibition (past & present). I'm also talking about things like The Seat Belt Law(tm), bought to us by our friendly insurance companies.