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Bill Joy On His Own Future, And The World's

Posted by timothy on from the he's-an-optipessimist dept.

geeber writes "There is an interesting interview with Bill Joy in the current edition of the Magazine in the New York Times. He is still obssesed with what he calls a 'civilization-changing event' brought on by the fast pace of research into dangerous technologies such as genetic engineering and nanotechnology. Another interesting tidbit: he has flirted with the idea of going to work for Google."

11 of 273 comments (clear)

  1. Get your tin foil hats here by The-Bus · · Score: 4, Informative

    No boogedy-boogedy NYT registatrion required
    here.

    --

    Small potatoes make the steak look bigger.

  2. Bill Joy??!!? by Richard_L_James · · Score: 3, Informative
    If like me you were wondering as always it appears wikipedia has the answer... or so I thought !!!

    Sorry! The wiki is experiencing some technical difficulties, and cannot contact the database server

    Oh well never mind instead click here for a google cache of Bill's page on wikipedia

    1. Re:Bill Joy??!!? by tdvaughan · · Score: 2, Informative

      The wiki admins on #wikipedia say it could be a day or more before the database is back up. Something to do with a forced killing of the mysql process.

  3. Re:James Watson on Gray Ooze... by index72 · · Score: 2, Informative
    While will be possible to create a disease that kills millions or billions of humans...

    This possibility has been dealt with at length in the novel, "Kalki" by Gore Vidal.

  4. Re:James Watson on Gray Ooze... by Dun+Malg · · Score: 1, Informative
    While will be possible to create a disease that kills millions or billions of humans...

    This possibility has been dealt with at length in the novel, "Kalki" by Gore Vidal.

    Are you seriously citing fiction by Gore Vidal as a reference on the subject?

    --
    If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
  5. Re:James Watson on Gray Ooze... by ThisIsFred · · Score: 4, Informative
    Also, one forgets that cells have been evolving against this possiblity for billions of years. If a "Gray Ooze" were possible it would very likely have appeared on its own.
    I agree that the possibility of accidentally creating something dangerous is probably low (e.g. a genetically engineered mushroom that suddenly mutates into a human-killing fungus). However, I don't think the evolutionary argument has sway in all possible examples, because the danger involves creating something with specific functions not guided by evolution, an entirely custom-built microorganism for example.

    There are two ways were I can possibly see that genetic engineering is potentially dangerous. The first is the chance that a genetically engineered microorganism that isn't dangerous to life on earth produces a byproduct that we didn't expect, which is dangerous to life. I highly doubt this would turn into catastrophe, since it's likely to be caught in the lab early on.

    The other possible danger is that some lab is contracted to produce an intentially harmful microorganism or virus. Just because it hasn't evolved yet doesn't mean it isn't possible to piece together something incredibly dangerous and nearly impossible counter. Evolution doesn't appear to cover all possible avenues, it only appears to cover those possible in the amount of time allowed before there is a major change to the environment. That said, the geological record appears to show lots of "false starts" that were cut short by earth-wide catastrophes. IAANB (biologist) so perhaps I'm missing the big picture.

    Anyway, my point is thus: We're far from the utopian promise of the future, and it will remain so because there is no single idea of perfection. War exists because one people want to force their political and social ideals on another people, even if there is no direct benefit for doing so. Against that backdrop, we've got biological weapons that look like the perfect WMD in a lab (chemical weapons and nukes don't reproduce when deployed, so they're less efficient), but turn out to be duds (luckily) when deployed. Imagine a virus which is airborne like the flu, destroys the immune system like HIV AIDS, can be spread by contact like a rhinovirus, but can be manufactured and stored almost indefinitely - unlike bacterial biological weapons. Assuming those traits aren't mutually exclusive, some agency, at some point, is likely to fund the research.
    --
    Fred

    "A fool and his freedom are soon parted"
    -RMS
  6. Re:that victoria secret ad by Nalez · · Score: 2, Informative

    The ad:
    http://spe.atdmt.com/b/AANYCVCSTVST/SAS04_P2_ 728x9 0.jpg

  7. Re:James Watson on Gray Ooze... by Dun+Malg · · Score: 1, Informative
    Barring medical breakthroughs, AIDS will kill every one of the 40 million people currently infected with it.

    Minor technical nit: One cannot be infected with AIDS. One is infected with HIV. AIDS is a syndrome generally associated with HIV infection, but HIV infection is not a surefire predictor of AIDS.

    --
    If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
  8. Interesting links... by Lank · · Score: 4, Informative

    One of my professors this semester assigned a project comparing and contrasting the views of Joy, Dertouzos, and Kurzweil. The following articles shed some light about each one's perspective, respectively.
    http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/8.04/joy.html
    http://www.lcs.mit.edu/about/reason.html
    http://www.lcs.mit.edu/about/kurzweil.html

    --
    Gotta get me one of these!
  9. Re:"Civilization Changing Event" by Schemat1c · · Score: 2, Informative

    I'm not sure how much you know about such things, but here are two quick notes for you: a) The closer you re traveling at the speed of light, the slower time moves, this has been proven and b) iirc if you could take Jupiter's mass and crush it into a hollow sphere 8 feet in diameter( might be radius) and you sat in the sphere, the rest of the world would age significantly faster then you ( time would actually be moving much slower for you).

    Well, I'm not sure how much I know about these things but in response to your examples:
    a) Sure time is slowing down, but you are still traveling forward in time. Just as you are now, but slower.
    b) Correct me if I'm wrong but if you sat on the mass of Jupiter compressed to 8 feet in diameter, your atoms would simply become a part of that little sphere. And if you could survive, once again you are still moving forward in time, just slower.

    I have read many books on time travel, both pro and con. The pro side hasn't convinced me yet. Until actual proof is presented to me I'll keep it in the same category as UFO's and the Loch Ness Monster.

    --

    "Nobody knows the age of the human race, but everybody agrees that it is old enough to know better." - Unknown
  10. Re:There's a difference by sybert · · Score: 3, Informative
    Knives -- 800,000 people killed in Rwanda with machetes, right under the UN's nose. The UN could care less because knives are not WMD's
    Over 100 Million people were slaughtered or executed by guns and knives so that Communists could stay in absolute power.
    Nukes -- The Bomb accounts for less than 1% of the WWII dead.
    Saddam's WMD's accounted for less than 10% of the people he butchered.
    Most current nuclear proliferation activity is directed over conflict in Israel/Palestine, where hundreds die a year. This is not even a blip in total world conflict.

    The worst current conflict is in Sudan, where over 100,000 are expected to be killed this year. Nobody seems to care about this, nor does anybody seem to care that George Bush is the only world leader who is trying to do anything about this.

    People who focus only on technology and not ideology are negligent. Freedom, liberty, democracy, and capitalism are the weapons that can make all other weapons obsolete.