Coverage of Foresight Gathering focuses on Kurzweil-Stock debate
from the Loose-ends dept.
Hereís a small collection of coverage of the Foresight/IMM Senior Associates Gathering, held in Palo Alto, California, 26 to 28 April 2002:
- Senior Associate and San Jose Mercury News business & technology columnist Dan Gillmor posted some preliminary notes on presentations made at the Gathering by Ralph Merkle, Ray Kurzweil, Stuart Brand, Paul Saffo, David Friedman, and Eric Drexler, in his eJournal entry of 27 April 2002.
- Gillmor also commented on the Gathering in his regular column the following week ("Futuristic small technology promises big changes for all of us", 4 May 2002). As Gillmor notes, "Drexler thinks the nanotech community needs to do a better job of explaining the potential for good. He told this year's gathering, held last weekend in Palo Alto, that we need a ëpicture of the future — a world view — that is workable and appealingí to the wider community, not just the already converted." (If the Mercury News link is broken, the article is also available on the Small Times website.)
- A lengthy piece by Ron Bailey of Reason Magazine ("Whatís the purpose of life? Nanotechnology might provide the answer", 1 May 2002) focuses on a thoughtful and thought-provoking debate between Foresight Advisor Ray Kurzweil and Gregory Stock (Director, UCLA Program on Medicine, Technology and Society) that took place during the Gathering ("BioFuture vs. MachineFuture") on Saturday, 27 April 2002. (Links to some of Baileyís previous commentaries on nanotechnology can be found in a Nanodot post from 3 August 2001).
- Ray Kurzweil has posted a presentation regarding the debate ("Arguments for a Green AND Gray Future") on the KurzweilAI website. Links to audio clips of both Kurzweilís and Stockís presentations, their debate, and the Q&A session that followed, are included.
- Although it was published before the Senior Associates Gathering, an extensive and reasonably well-written article in the Washington Post ("The Next Generation: Biotechnology May Make Superhero Fantasy a Reality", by Joel Garreau, 26 April 2002) touches on many of the looming issues of human genetic and tissue engineering, bio and nanotechnology, transhumanism, AI, and the singularity, and presents views from many perspectives.
May 23rd, 2002 at 1:13 AM
The Moral and Social Questions of Biotech
The questions that biotech is posing to us now are very similar to the questions that will machine-phase nanotech will pose to us later.
If biotech/pharmacology/etc. gives us the means to enhance our own biology in vivo, will we be allowed to?
So far it appears that the answer is yes and no. We ban athletes from using drugs from enhancing their physical capacity, yet we allow people to use cosmetic surgery. At work we ban some mind altering chemicals and actively promote others like caffine. So far there hasn't yet been any scandals where kids are failed from tests because of memory enhancing drugs but we habitually assign ritalin, effexor, etc. to school children.
Granted we are still at the primitive stages, but as the drugs and knowlege of their effects improve, this question will get more and more strident.
Nevermind steering our children's genes, what about what we can do to ourselves now with chemicals and therapies?
May 23rd, 2002 at 1:47 AM
Incoherent rants about human desire
Should we even waste our time with human desires anymore?
That is a question each technically savvy person needs ask themself. (Yes, I know that's grammatically incorrect but are you so sure gender, let alone gender in language, is really meaningful anymore?) The argument could be made that they don't really serve any purpose anymore and are a tremendous waste of time. This is a slight variation on the spock meme–a hopefully more constructive variation. Perhaps I can call it the Ghandi meme.
Some folks, sometimes I'm one of them, perhaps mortified with what human motivations sometimes drive us to do, want to walk away from the shallow impulses that make us fear different skin colors or engage in anorexic behavior or seek to have children in our fifties and sixties.
Aside from some health reasons, why waste time with this?
Why envy the power and beauty of youth? Why have children in the first world if they consume more than 20 times the resources of children in the third world? Why envy all those kids that were smarter and faster than you were in high school?
Some human desires are driving this rush of technology. Is this good or bad?
Perhaps the first thing we need to focus on is transcending the shallowness. We have to sit down and think about what's best for us as a civilization and culture *not* what's best for us as a species because the time is rapidly approaching where we will differentiate into a wide variety of species.
What's best for us as individuals and what's best for us as groups and a group? How do we keep the two from conflicting?
May 23rd, 2002 at 2:10 AM
Will we better as gods than as mortals?
The evidence, based on the history of our increasing powers over these past million years or so, seems to suggest that the answer is both yes and no.
We have committed terrible atrocities both against ourselves and the environment. Sometimes we are incredibly petty, buying expensive sport cars and lip implants when there really is no point to such things.
Other times we are incredibly noble. Most of us keep saying we want to save the world even though, nine times in ten, we fall flat on our silly faces. We want to cure the worlds diseases. We want to help the poor. Even though these things often appear hopeless.
Even our worst are sometimes noble. The yin contains some yang and vice versa. Hitler was kind to animals. Ghandi alienated his son. The evil contains a little good. The good contains a little evil. Is it really possible to be all yin or yang? Is that kind of perfection really possible?
My guess is no. My guess is that things won't get better and they won't get worse. They'll just get different. We'll be exchanging the agony of the human condition for the agony of the post-human condition.