NEGATIVE - CRITIQUE OF TECHNOLOGY 163

TECHNOLOGY WILL MAKE HUMANS OBSOLETE

TECHNOLOGY THREATENS TO MAKE HUMANS OBSOLETE

Tony Snow, The Detroit News, March 24, 2000, SECTION: Opinion Page; Pg. 15 TITLE: It's time to confront high-tech worries // acs-VT2001

Bill Joy, chief scientist and co-founder of Sun Microsysems, thinks most of us are missing the Big Story, which is that we are making ourselves obsolete. Forget about Democrats and Republicans, he says. Rapidly, and in great exuberant leaps, we are handing our sovereignty to machines.

Joy offers this arresting argument in the latest issue of Wired magazine. The thesis may seem far-fetched, but it's not: Each day, astounding new developments in genetics, nanotechnology and robotics bring within reach innovations that would have astounded even the most visionary prophet just years ago.

Researchers already have begun using leech nerves to assemble "living" computers (perhaps for the Internal Revenue Service). We are likely within the next few decades to see the first programmable machines that use brain cells and the first truly "lifelike" robots.

HUMANS WILL LOSE THE EVOLUTIONARY STRUGGLE WITH BIO-ROBOTS

Tony Snow, The Detroit News, March 24, 2000, SECTION: Opinion Page; Pg. 15 TITLE: It's time to confront high-tech worries // acs-VT2001

Joy frets that Satanic inventions could crowd humans out of the picture and that we might even lose an evolutionary struggle with bio-robots. In addition, he warns that continuing innovations in biotechnology could make it possible, either through inadvertence or design, to create a microbial Frankenstein capable of endangering the entire planet.