The problem with technology is that it doesn't come in black and white, or even shades of grey. Technologies only have an 'ethical dimension' when they are applied in some way (spoon technology is not intrinsically evil, but jabbing a spoon into someone's eye is often considered to be evil). The technology which mutates babies into tiny killer machines could also cure them of cancer, and so on.
Technology itself cannot be 'ethically' evaluated (anyone study ethometrics?), only the uses of technology. Even if you did wish to block a particular technology I think such an attempt would be rather ineffective unless the development of that technology requiried funds which only a world-government could supply.
Even the ethical evaluation of technology is more than problematic, particularly since it would require a system of government based on ethics instead of stability for both evaluation and implementation.
The ramifications and consequences of new technologies can only be explained to those capable and willing to understand - this would require a complete revamp of our system of education. Understanding of technologies is currently limited and perforce leads to an 'elite' who understand them. I think it was Benjamin Franklin (?) who supported the idea of good education for all partly because it was necessary for an effectual democracy.
Too make effective judgements people would not only need to be technically educated but ethically educated. Currently such education is random, slapdash and factional - the power base of most religions is that they teach the One True System of Ethics. In many countries ehtics and religions are confused. Religions will, in general, resist the creation of an accepted system of ethics partly because it would likely differ from their creed, but mostly because it would erode their power. If the negation of an ethical backdrop to events weakened western religions, what would the acceptance of secular ethics do?
When even elementary millenia-old technologies like birth control are still hotly contested on supposed ethical grounds, how can you assume that we can wait contemporary issues to 'simmer down' to a consensus opinion.
Marios (was that inflammatory?)
"I have worked hard for nearly two years, for the sole purpose of infusing life into the human body," wrote Victor Frankenstein in Mary Shelley's great novel. "For this I had deprived myself of rest and health. I had desired it with an ardour that far exceeded moderation; but now that I had finished, the beauty of the dream vanished, and breathless horror and disgust filled my heart."
Doesn't everyone feel this way after a big project has been completed?
I think the moral of the story is that one should avoid letting minor setbacks in alpha tests knock one's self confidence. I mean, how much damage can one monster do? He wasm't even a programmer.
Marios
I wonder how long it will be until someone pays for artificial insemination with re-activated royal spermatazoa?
I can just imagine it on Oprah - "Delinquent fathers". "The father of my child not only died several thousand years ago but his country refuses to acknowledge my son as royal issue...".
Marios
Don't stop there! Have you ever noticed that keyboards are utterly cluttered up with keys? Why not replace it with new minimalist scheme of two sets of eight keys each - one set of 'primaries' and one set of 'shifts'? You just program it with your favourite keys (a, e, t, s) and you can get them at the simultaneous touch of nine buttons.
What about RPG's? Clearly there is a niche for the 'RPG keyboard', with specially designed keys. For example, the 'hehehe' key and the 'run die! buy sell boil seal spank catch spoon fish fight! kewldude strobo nix boat house Orc' key.
The only RTS games I can imagine needing an extra mouse+ for would be fully 3D games like Homeworld. Even then, I can't but think that the keyboard would be faster.
Marios
Sorry if I seem to be going off on a tangent about nanotechnology - but I still disagree about the likely path of progress.
Technology is only partly about gradual progression - most movement comes in leaps and starts (as, it seems, with evolution - punctuated equilibrium etc.). I don't think we will see 'mundane universal fabricators' before we have nanotech. We are already composed of 'microtech' machines - enzymes. As such, genetic engineering (such as is occurring now) offers us a shortcut to the direct manipulation of molecules.
Automation can come in two ways - bottom-up, as in nanotechnology, and top-down, as in artificial intelligence. If robots with the capacity to self-learn and make their own tools are created, then factories can become fully automated without great change.
I suspect that the relevant technologies will appear after a few key breakthroughs and mature overnight (something like a decade) and will bypass the intermediate stages of milli- and micro-machines.
Equally, they could be superseded, to a degree, by the appearance of effective AI.
By the way, energy supply isn't really a concern for nano-machines - about half of the necessary manipulations would be exothermic and it would be easy enough to gain energy by breaking down or bonding atoms and molecules (in much the way enzymes do, but more flexibly).
Marios
Riemann hypothesis? Excellent! I shall make a point of writing half the proof down in my diary just before I die.
It'll fit in nicely with my claims to have formulated a working GUT (which, obviously, I wouldn't be able to fit in the margin).
Marios
Oscillates between vague and arbitrary - interesting, but no more informed or meaningful than any number of SF stories.
All self-replicating factories need to become viable is the creation of one nano-machine which can handcraft molecules, atom by atom, to a given design. It becomes self-replicating when it's fed it's own design.
There are only three catches once that is achieved;
(1) Information - once you have the tools to create an object, atom by atom, you still need to know which atoms and where. A lump of iron would be reasonably easy - or any simple crystalline structure. However, making a transplant organ by order would require a tremendous amount of information.
(2) Control - that which make nano-machines useful also makes them difficult to regulate. Their size would make them vulnerable to 'mutation' by environmental interaction (getting whacked by an errant atom/photon) and their multiplicity coupled with their ability to replicate would cause them to evolve quickly. Evolution would tend to make them selfish (if they replicate at X speed while fabricating a car, how much faster would they replicate if they didn't bother with the car?) and select for the ones which can evade whatever 'fidelity checks' were implemented.
(3) What do we do with all the out of work people? The physical sciences are already hundreds of years ahead of the social sciences, if the pace of development is accelerated yet further for the 'hard' sciences then the gulf could well become catastrophic. Many people define themselves by their work, if it's removed from them then the majority of the population could spend it's days watching TV and posting slashdot.
Marios
Indeed, I shall write to my MP right away!
After all, politicians just love funding programmes which will only ripen many years after they've left office...
I fear anything so long term goes into the paperbasket along with Pollution Prevention, Industry Regulation and Education.
Dear All,
Seems to me that he's clearly suffering from ADHD. His lack of ability to concentrate on 'valid authority' figures seems quite symptomatic of the syndrome.
Don't worry, though. A full course of Ritalin (which has just been OKed for use in Britain) will soon sort him out.
Marios
Slashdot Mirror
The problem with technology is that it doesn't come in black and white, or even shades of grey. Technologies only have an 'ethical dimension' when they are applied in some way (spoon technology is not intrinsically evil, but jabbing a spoon into someone's eye is often considered to be evil). The technology which mutates babies into tiny killer machines could also cure them of cancer, and so on.
Technology itself cannot be 'ethically' evaluated (anyone study ethometrics?), only the uses of technology. Even if you did wish to block a particular technology I think such an attempt would be rather ineffective unless the development of that technology requiried funds which only a world-government could supply.
Even the ethical evaluation of technology is more than problematic, particularly since it would require a system of government based on ethics instead of stability for both evaluation and implementation.
The ramifications and consequences of new technologies can only be explained to those capable and willing to understand - this would require a complete revamp of our system of education. Understanding of technologies is currently limited and perforce leads to an 'elite' who understand them. I think it was Benjamin Franklin (?) who supported the idea of good education for all partly because it was necessary for an effectual democracy.
Too make effective judgements people would not only need to be technically educated but ethically educated. Currently such education is random, slapdash and factional - the power base of most religions is that they teach the One True System of Ethics. In many countries ehtics and religions are confused. Religions will, in general, resist the creation of an accepted system of ethics partly because it would likely differ from their creed, but mostly because it would erode their power. If the negation of an ethical backdrop to events weakened western religions, what would the acceptance of secular ethics do?
When even elementary millenia-old technologies like birth control are still hotly contested on supposed ethical grounds, how can you assume that we can wait contemporary issues to 'simmer down' to a consensus opinion.
Marios (was that inflammatory?)
"I have worked hard for nearly two years, for the sole purpose of infusing life into the human body," wrote Victor Frankenstein in Mary Shelley's great novel. "For this I had deprived myself of rest and health. I had desired it with an ardour that far exceeded moderation; but now that I had finished, the beauty of the dream vanished, and breathless horror and disgust filled my heart." Doesn't everyone feel this way after a big project has been completed? I think the moral of the story is that one should avoid letting minor setbacks in alpha tests knock one's self confidence. I mean, how much damage can one monster do? He wasm't even a programmer. Marios
I wonder how long it will be until someone pays for artificial insemination with re-activated royal spermatazoa? I can just imagine it on Oprah - "Delinquent fathers". "The father of my child not only died several thousand years ago but his country refuses to acknowledge my son as royal issue...". Marios
Don't stop there! Have you ever noticed that keyboards are utterly cluttered up with keys? Why not replace it with new minimalist scheme of two sets of eight keys each - one set of 'primaries' and one set of 'shifts'? You just program it with your favourite keys (a, e, t, s) and you can get them at the simultaneous touch of nine buttons.
What about RPG's? Clearly there is a niche for the 'RPG keyboard', with specially designed keys. For example, the 'hehehe' key and the 'run die! buy sell boil seal spank catch spoon fish fight! kewldude strobo nix boat house Orc' key.
The only RTS games I can imagine needing an extra mouse+ for would be fully 3D games like Homeworld. Even then, I can't but think that the keyboard would be faster.
Marios
Sorry if I seem to be going off on a tangent about nanotechnology - but I still disagree about the likely path of progress.
Technology is only partly about gradual progression - most movement comes in leaps and starts (as, it seems, with evolution - punctuated equilibrium etc.). I don't think we will see 'mundane universal fabricators' before we have nanotech. We are already composed of 'microtech' machines - enzymes. As such, genetic engineering (such as is occurring now) offers us a shortcut to the direct manipulation of molecules.
Automation can come in two ways - bottom-up, as in nanotechnology, and top-down, as in artificial intelligence. If robots with the capacity to self-learn and make their own tools are created, then factories can become fully automated without great change.
I suspect that the relevant technologies will appear after a few key breakthroughs and mature overnight (something like a decade) and will bypass the intermediate stages of milli- and micro-machines.
Equally, they could be superseded, to a degree, by the appearance of effective AI.
By the way, energy supply isn't really a concern for nano-machines - about half of the necessary manipulations would be exothermic and it would be easy enough to gain energy by breaking down or bonding atoms and molecules (in much the way enzymes do, but more flexibly).
Marios
Riemann hypothesis? Excellent! I shall make a point of writing half the proof down in my diary just before I die.
It'll fit in nicely with my claims to have formulated a working GUT (which, obviously, I wouldn't be able to fit in the margin).
Marios
Oscillates between vague and arbitrary - interesting, but no more informed or meaningful than any number of SF stories.
All self-replicating factories need to become viable is the creation of one nano-machine which can handcraft molecules, atom by atom, to a given design. It becomes self-replicating when it's fed it's own design.
There are only three catches once that is achieved;
(1) Information - once you have the tools to create an object, atom by atom, you still need to know which atoms and where. A lump of iron would be reasonably easy - or any simple crystalline structure. However, making a transplant organ by order would require a tremendous amount of information.
(2) Control - that which make nano-machines useful also makes them difficult to regulate. Their size would make them vulnerable to 'mutation' by environmental interaction (getting whacked by an errant atom/photon) and their multiplicity coupled with their ability to replicate would cause them to evolve quickly. Evolution would tend to make them selfish (if they replicate at X speed while fabricating a car, how much faster would they replicate if they didn't bother with the car?) and select for the ones which can evade whatever 'fidelity checks' were implemented.
(3) What do we do with all the out of work people? The physical sciences are already hundreds of years ahead of the social sciences, if the pace of development is accelerated yet further for the 'hard' sciences then the gulf could well become catastrophic. Many people define themselves by their work, if it's removed from them then the majority of the population could spend it's days watching TV and posting slashdot.
Marios
Indeed, I shall write to my MP right away! After all, politicians just love funding programmes which will only ripen many years after they've left office... I fear anything so long term goes into the paperbasket along with Pollution Prevention, Industry Regulation and Education.
Dear All, Seems to me that he's clearly suffering from ADHD. His lack of ability to concentrate on 'valid authority' figures seems quite symptomatic of the syndrome. Don't worry, though. A full course of Ritalin (which has just been OKed for use in Britain) will soon sort him out. Marios