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Emerging Technologies and the Future of Humanity (sagepub.com)

Posted by samzenpus on from the robot-overlords dept.

Lasrick writes: Brad Allenby, Lincoln Professor of Engineering and Ethics and founding chair of the Consortium for Emerging Technologies, Military Operations and National Security at Arizona State University, delivers a fascinating examination of resistance to technological developments over time. Allenby starts by breaking down discussions into 3 categories, and then focuses on the third: the "apocalyptic" discussions. "[T]echnological evolution is accelerating, which has significant implications. Past rates of technological change were slow enough that psychological, social, and institutional adjustments were possible, but today technology changes so rapidly that technology systems decouple from governance mechanisms of all kinds. All these factors, operating together, synergistically increase the impact, speed, and depth of change.

12 of 120 comments (clear)

  1. This professor should study systemd. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    This professor should study systemd, and the impact it's having on the Linux ecosystem. For many users, systemd is a technology that did pretty much come out of nowhere. Many Debian users were taken by surprise, for example, at the speed upon which it was forced on them. These Debian users did a routine update, and systemd ended up getting installed. If the update included a kernel update, they may have rebooted their computer, only to find that it wouldn't boot properly. I know that happened to me on multiple occasions. While systemd might be problematic for the Linux community, it has actually been the best thing to happen to FreeBSD. Thanks to systemd, I've returned to FreeBSD, after a long hiatus. FreeBSD is a good example of how avoiding the adoption of an unwanted technology like systemd can be beneficial for a community. FreeBSD is proving to be the OS that many Linux users have wanted for some time. But if it hadn't been for systemd causing problems with their Linux systems, they may never have actually gotten around to trying FreeBSD. Now that they have tried FreeBSD, they couldn't be happier, and many wished they'd switched to it much earlier! They look at what's happening in the Linux ecosystem, with systemd now taking over so much unrelated functionality, and they're thankful knowing that they're now using an OS, FreeBSD, that follows the well-tested and proven UNIX philosophy.

  2. Is this what a Singularity looks like from inside? by jeffb+(2.718) · · Score: 3, Insightful

    In other news, today's problems are different in kind from anything that's ever come before, and we'll surely founder on the reefs of evil if we don't dig in our heels and adhere to The Old, Proven Ways.

    Just as has been the case on every other day that's ever been.

  3. Unconvincing about qualitative differences by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    TFA claimed that there are qualitative differences, not just quantitative differences, in modern technologies and backed it up thus:
    "Partially as a result of such technologies rippling across a population of seven billion people, we now live on a terraformed planet, the first world we know of anywhere that has been shaped by the deliberate activities of a single species. That is not a discontinuous process, but it is qualitatively new.

    Moreover, as the discussion of the engineered warrior of 2050 suggests, the human itself has become a design space. It is certainly true that people have always changed themselves in many ways, from consuming intoxicants of all kinds, to medicine, to education, but there is little question that the direct interventions that are now possible, combined with accelerating advances in fields such as neuroscience, genetics and molecular biology, and prosthetics, make virtually all aspects of the human, including cognitive and psychological domains, potentially subject to design."

    First the non-sequitur that Earth as the only "terraformed" planet implies that the current technology is qualitatively different to past technology. Because breakwaters and dams were invented at the same time as autonomous drones, right?

    Then the second one states straight out that people have always changed themselves in many ways and then claims that the current ability to do so is a qualitative difference.

    Doesn't say anything about the other claims of the article. The feeble reasoning on this topic bugged me enough that I didn't bother to keep reading.

    1. Re:Unconvincing about qualitative differences by binarstu · · Score: 2

      There's plenty of material in the rest of the article that is even less convincing. Consider this:

      "...the American Midwest is an agricultural breadbasket, not a large swamp, because railroads provided the link between that farming region and the demand of the East Coast..."

      Does the author actually think the midwest was "a large swamp" prior to the arrival of settlers and the conversion to agriculture? Because it most certainly was not, unless the author thinks grasslands, savannas, and deciduous forests are the same thing as "a large swamp".

      TFA was filled with sweeping generalizations like this, and mostly failed to substantiate any of them with references or other evidence. I imagine that this "large swamp" example wasn't the only case of pure BS.

  4. Best Part of the Article by xxxJonBoyxxx · · Score: 4, Interesting

    >> This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

    This was the best part of the article, since it basically tells us this is just some professor's blog.

    1. Re:Best Part of the Article by JoeMerchant · · Score: 2

      And you would prefer to read an article from a professor who is writing as a tool of his institution and/or grant committee?

  5. Fishing for the verb by Okian+Warrior · · Score: 2

    Gah! Just perusing the article makes me want to submit it to the Bulwer Lytton contest.

    Especially given today’s globalized culture, and the strategic and military advantages that emerging technologies can provide, it is highly unlikely that meaningful constraints on technological evolution, whether derived from cultural, competitive, or religious foundations, will be successful.

    To misquote Mark Twain: When the author dives into a sentence, that is the last you are going to see of him till he emerges on the other side of his Atlantic with his verb in his mouth.

  6. tldr by ljw1004 · · Score: 3, Informative

    What an awful article! Pompous and wordy, and oddly fixated on railroads.

    Tldr: change is happening.

    1. Re:tldr by fyngyrz · · Score: 2

      Tunnels, brother, tunnels. Or sister. Don't you think about tunnels? About every few seconds or so? If course it's about railroads...

      --
      I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
  7. Re:Is this what a Singularity looks like from insi by monkeyxpress · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Today's fundamental problems are, remarkably, almost exactly the same as they have been for recorded history. People are greedy, easily indoctrinated with irrational ideas, and dishonest. What is quite amazing though is that technology has continued to deliver an incredible capacity for abundance that shows no sign of stopping anytime soon.

    My observation is that we created a reasonably effective economic system for when labour was the limiting factor. The idea that you must work to eat is fine when there is only enough food and basic goods available if everyone in the village is helping to tend the fields. It makes sense that the guy who won't work is the first to miss out if there is not enough. However the shiny iPhone in your hand and gold ring on your finger would suggest we have really moved on from this. There is a huge surplus of productive capacity around, and much of the stuff we consume is generally unnecessary. Saying to someone that if they can't do a pointless monkey dance for the people who happen to own all the food they will have to go hungry while the food gets left in the field is, I believe, one day going to seem as barbaric as the labour conditions in Dickensian England.

    Our present system has served us well, but is becoming a victim of its own success. We need to deal with the entrenched puritan work ethic in society and start to move towards a system that can manage the massive growth in capital productivity that is going to occur over the next few decades. If we don't the sad reality is that we are likely to put people under tremendous and pointless suffering for no reason. The great recession was the start of that, and it will only get worse unless we recognise that we do not have a pre 1950s labour limited economy anymore.

  8. Distortion From The Article by WOOFYGOOFY · · Score: 2

    FTA:

    ...Sustainability advocates and environmental activists often claim that âoethe planet is at risk,â but of course it is not. The planet is a large mass of rock and a film of various carbon compounds, and that is not at risk at all. What is at risk is a particular mental model of what the world should look like, a constructed snapshot. That does not mean that there arenâ(TM)t many environmental issues that require attention; of course there are. But, as in the case of the emerging technology discourse, it does mean that existential catastrophe language is not only invalid, but can actually prevent seeking constructive adaptations to accelerating change.

    Uh, no it doesn't.

    This appears to be disingenuous on the part of the author. What environmentalists mean when they say "the planet is at risk" is "the ability of the planet to sustain human civilization (and not just in its current form, but ANY form) is at risk".

    The actual question to ask is- is the habitability of the Earth at risk from global warming. And on THAT question, the answer is a resounding yes.

    M.I.T. doubles its 2095 warming projection to 10 degrees with 866 ppm and Arctic warming of 20 degrees F

    http://climateprogress.org/200...

    Our hellish future: Definitive NOAA-led report on U.S. climate impacts warns of scorching 9 to 11 degrees F warming over most of inland U.S. by 2090 with Kansas above 90 degrees F some 120 days a year and that isnâ(TM)t the worst case, itâ(TM)s business as usual!

    http://climateprogress.org/200...

    Hadley Center: Catastrophic 5-7 degree C warming by 2100 on current emissions path

    http://climateprogress.org/200...

    Science: CO2 levels havenâ(TM)t been this high for 15 million years, when it was 5 degrees to 10 degrees F warmer and seas were 75 to 120 feet higher. We have shown that this dramatic rise in sea level is associated with an increase in CO2 levels of about 100 ppm.

    http://climateprogress.org/200...

    Ocean dead zones to expand, remain for thousands of years

    http://climateprogress.org/200...

    Nature Geoscience study: Oceans are acidifying 10 times faster today than 55 million years ago when a mass extinction of marine species occurred

    http://climateprogress.org/201...

    Nature: Dynamic thinning of Greenland and Antarctic ice-sheet ocean margins is more sensitive, pervasive, enduring and important than previously realized.

    http://climateprogress.org/200...

    Sea levels may rise 3 times faster than IPCC estimated, could hit 6 feet by 2100
    High Water: Greenland ice sheet melting faster than expected and could raise East Coast sea levels an extra 20 inches by 2100 to more than 6 feet.

    http://climateprogress.org/200...

    Science stunner: Clouds Appear to Be Big, Bad Player in Global Warmi

  9. Re:Is this what a Singularity looks like from insi by WOOFYGOOFY · · Score: 3, Interesting

    A great post. One tweak. People put people in subjegation because they thrill to doing so. They like to do it. They like knowing that they have absolutely everything- all power, all money and they control opportunity for everyone.

    This is a basic unhappy fact about humans. They get off on dominance hierarchies, seek to ascend them instinctively, and equally as instinctively seek to rule, cripple and destroy those beneath them.

    The socio-biological roots of this are well known. In an era of competition for the basics of survival, when stuff is basicallya zero sum game, the males seek to monopolize everything and the females, who do the same, also do it by proxy. That is, they differentially reward powerful, high status males with sex and offspring.

    They way we moderns represent this to ourselves is we say men are ambitous and women like rich, powerful men.

    The world devoves to harems, a few select males monpolizing all females, whenever conditions permit. The fact that the majority of males get cut out and rebel means that this *system* can't always sustain itself and is unstable (but look at the Middle East, Saudi and other places for current examples).

    But with respect to *stuff*, well, the system does indeed permit and even encourages it.

    In both cases, it's all about competition for limited resources and selfish genes wanting to monopolize reproduction. In the harme case, we've gotten past that in the Western world. In the case of *stuff*- for which money is a proxy- we are nearly as primitive as we've ever been.