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Business Relinquishment

WesDuCharme writes "Glenn Reynolds has an interesting piece entitled A Tale of Two Nanotechs http://www.techcentralstation.com/012804A.html. He makes the case that the business community is pulling us away from molecular nanotechnology for fear of the public relations problems that advanced applications may cause. In making the case, however, he oversimplifies the dichotomy, ìThe downside is that a sometimes-bitter war has been waged within the nanotechnology community itself, between the scientists and visionaries on the one hand, and the business people on the other. The scientists and visionaries want research on advanced nanotechnologyÖî Of course there are some scientists, such as Richard Smalley (whom Glenn mentions later), who seem squarely on the side of the business community in this matter. The article goes on to make good arguments that what we might call ìbusiness relinquishmentî is unlikely to work."

Fine-grained relinquishment of nanotechnology

Writing in CIO Magazine on the "Promise and Peril of the 21st Century", Ray Kurzweil warns "As technology accelerates toward the full realization of genetic engineering, nanotechnology and, ultimately, robotics (collectively known as GNR), we will see the same intertwined potentials [the double-edged sword of technology]: a feast of creativity resulting from human intelligence expanded manyfold, combined with grave new dangers. We need to devise our strategies now to reap the promise while we manage the peril."

Online discussion of "engaging the Greens" on nanotech, relinquishment

Anonymous Coward writes "Greenpeace, noted peace and ecology NGO, is hosting a debate on arms races and relenquishment – it's unofficial but is pretty detailed. It appears that the organization is debating Bill Joy's arguments and the general strategies of de-escalation and relenquishment."

More on this discussion was posted by jbash, who writes "People around Foresight are always talking about how we (whoever "we" are) need to go and engage the Green types (whoever they are) and talk about the implications of nanotechnology machine intelligence, and whatnot. Well, I was tracing some links from this very site, and, lo! I found one of "them" saying something about engaging "us".

Read more for the lengthy remainder of jbashís remarks.

NOTE: The Greenpeace site is extremely sssslllooooowwwww . . .

Merkle to ACM: why "relinquishment" can't work

from the why-the-good-guys-have-to-work-work-work dept.
Foresight advisor Ralph Merkle responds to Bill Joy's concerns in an interview for ACM's Ubiquity: "…if we attempt to block the development of new technology, if we collectively try and say, 'These technologies are technologies that are not meant for humans to understand,' and we try to back away from them, what we effectively have done is not to block the technologies, we have simply ensured that the most responsible parties will not develop them…In other words, a relinquishment of the new technology, unless it is absolutely 100 percent effective, is not effective at all. If it's 99.99 percent effective, then you simply ensure that the .01 percent who pays no attention to such calls for relinquishment is the group that will develop it."

Dangers of Nanotech "Relinquishment"

from the just-say-no-to-just-say-no dept.
More debate on the issues raised in the press recently by Bill Joy, this time by Foresight board member Glenn Reynolds, writing for IntellectualCapital.com: 'Rather than too much technology, as Joy suggests, perhaps the problem is that we have too little. In the early days of nanotechnology, dangerous technologies may enjoy an advantage. Once the technology matures, it is likely that dangerous uses can be contained. The real danger of the sort of limits Joy proposes is that they may retard the development of constructive technologies, thus actually lengthening the window of vulnerability.'

Panel discussion on GNR technologies held in Washington, D.C.

A number of items on the KurzweilAI.net website present comments made by inventor-author Ray Kurzweil during a panel discussion on whether humans are an endangered species held in Washington, D.C. on 19 December 2001. Kurzweil proposed a major new national program to develop defensive strategies, technologies, and ethical standards to address the dangers of emerging genetic, nanotechnology and robotics (GNR) technologies. The panel also included Bill Joy of Sun Microsystems, environmentalist Bill McKibben, and theologian Ann Foerst. Responding to calls for a halt or relinquishment of development of GNR technologies, Kurzweil said, "I believe that implementing such a choice would require a Brave New World type of totalitarian government in which the government uses technology to ban the further development of technology," said Kurzweil. An outright ban "would be destructive, morally indefensible, and in any event would not address the dangers."

Kurzweilís comments were reported in a news item on the KurzweilAI.net website. In addition to a brief news item on the panel, you can read a briefing paper on the issues that have been raised in the debate on how to deal with GNR technologies, as well as a set of questions posed to Kurzweil during panel discussion and his responses.

Policy Wonk Advocates Government "Control" of NT

from the Keeping-Nanotech-Safe-for-Democracy dept.
A lengthy article in The Washington Monthly ("Downsizing," by N. Thompson, October 2000) makes an interesting case for government involvement and even regulation of nanotechnology development: "Deep government involvement in nanotechnology is more than a practical obligation from a research and national defense perspective. It's close to becoming a moral imperative."

MIT's Dertouzos replies to Bill Joy

from the relinquishment-regarded-as-harmful dept.
MIT computer scientist Michael Dertouzos responds to Bill Joy in Technology Review , on the call for relinquishment. Excerpts: I donít buy it…So limited is our ability to assess consequences that itís not even helped by hindsight: On balance, are cars a good or bad thing for society?…We are unable to judge whether something we invented more than 50 years ago is good or bad for us today. Yet Joy wants us to make these judgments prospectively, to determine which technologies we should forgo!…Just because chips and machines are getting faster doesnít mean theyíll get smarter, let alone lead to self-replication…Should we stop computer science and AI research in the belief that intelligent machines someday will reproduce themselves and surpass us? I say no. We should wait to find out whether the potential dangers are supported by more than our imagination…We shouldnít forget that what we do as human beings is part of nature.

Alarms about Techno-Utopianism

from the utopian-dystopian-or-atopian? dept.
Senior Associate BryanBruns writes "Reason magazine has a story "Dystopian Fearmongers Strike Again" criticizing the "TechnoUtopian" advertisement recently run in the New York Times. (The ad is available online: technoad.pdf.) The advertisement has three paragraphs on nanotechnology, with reasonably accurate content, using nanotech as another example of technological optimism. The section on nanotech finishes by saying "[Bill] Joy has grave doubts about proceeding, citing dangers from escaping self-replicating nanomachines, and from military applications. (There are also terribly frightening surveillance and privacy concerns.) So far, Joy is one of the few major scientists to be openly critical." Read more for details and analysis.

Nanowar: Lessons from Biowar

from the wow-Glenn-writes-really-fast dept.
Senior Associate/law professor Glenn Reynolds has been busy — here's another media article he co-authored, responding to Bill Joy's comments on nanotechnology: "…given that research into nanotechnology — like the cruder forms of biological and chemical warfare — can be conducted clandestinely on small budgets and in difficult-to-spot facilities, the likelihood of such research going on is rather high. Terrorists would have the greatest incentive possible to develop nanotechnologies far more deadly than old-fashioned biological warfare. This makes Joy's relinquishment argument hard to swallow. At the very least, it suggests that Joy and those who agree with him need to step up to the plate and make some more sophisticated arguments. No one doubts that Joy and the rest have good intentions. But as the example of biological warfare illustrates, good intentions, even when embodied in popular agreements to abandon a technology, don't necessarily have good consequences." (Glenn points out that the anti-trust comment in the article was not his.)

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