Article looks at dangers, military uses of nanotech
from the The-future-as-minefield dept.
A rather morbid but informative article about the potential dangers of advanced nanotechnology and the abuse of information technology appeared in the Montreal Gazette ("Cyber-doomsayers offer chilling vision", by Alex Roslin, 14 October 2001). The article leads off with a fictional "grey-goo" meltdown, then recaps the arguments made by Bill Joy over the past year and a half. The article then more usefully focuses on current interest in military applications of micro- and nano-technologies, as well as information systems. The article quotes retired U.S. Army colonel Thomas Adams, who has criticized the U.S. military for its failure to envision the potential consequences of technologies it is helping to develop:
"We are rapidly approaching an event horizon in human development, a point at which the mutually reinforcing trends described here will combine to produce an aggregate result so different from what we now know that it is impossible to guess what it will be."
October 31st, 2001 at 9:06 AM
Let's Face It…
The dangers are there…out of all the people who would actually have hands on access to the technology in a nanotech world, the only people who have the potential of creating a grey goo scenario is the pathetic military. Which is why, I believe, the military should keeps its nose out of something it will never have the capacity to understand in the first place.
Nanotech should be for everyone – but anyone who uses the technology for warfare should be eliminated – the technology is just too dangerous for simpleton politicians who are trigger happy.
October 31st, 2001 at 4:01 PM
Rather..
The argument is that humankind in general isn't ready for its' own machinations.