Our friend and CRN Task Force member David Brin was interviewed recently for a profile in Discover magazine. Here are a few highlights.
On privacy:
As far as privacy itself is concerned, I have a simple answer to that. Human beings want it. We naturally are built to want some privacy. If we remain a free and knowing people, then sovereign citizens will demand a little privacy, though we’ll redefine the term for changing times.The question really boils down to: Will tomorrow’s citizens be free and knowing? Will new technologies empower us to exert reciprocal accountability, even upon the mighty? It may seem ironic, but for privacy and freedom to survive, we’ll need a civilization that is mostly open and transparent, so that each of us may catch the would-be voyeurs and Big Brothers.
On the distribution of power:
Consider that NASA can’t continue to find killer asteroids as they were commanded to do because they don’t have the budget. Within five years, amateurs will take over this task. You are going to have asteroid surveys in 10,000 backyards with incredibly sophisticated CCD cameras that feed into loyal robots that are searching the sky in order to make their owner famous. It is the distribution of instrumental power that is driving our new ability to see. . . We are going to reach the point where no part of the sky is not being looked at at any given time. This will be the age of amateurs.
On the downside of progress:
Try to imagine what it will be like when cyberneticists do to their room-size laboratories what others did to the room-size computers of the past. And of course, it’s going to pose a great many problems to us. Because when pimple-faced teenage hackers can’t mess up just your Web site but they can also synthesize any known or unknown organic compound and then go to work at a fast food joint, are you gonna eat fast food under those circumstances? The fundamental thing that’s always made a difference in every revolution is the distribution of power.
On our descendants:
Jonas Salk said our top job is to be “good ancestors.” If we in this era meet the challenges of our time, then our heirs may have powers that would seem godlike to us—the way we take for granted miracles like flying through the sky or witnessing events far across the globe. If those descendants do turn out to be better, wiser people than us, will they marvel that primitive beings managed so well, the same way we’re awed by the best of our ancestors? I hope so. It’s poignant consolation for not getting to be a demigod.
If that whets your appetite, then read the rest.
Tags: nanotechnology nanotech nano science technology ethics weblog blog
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