Why the future doesn't need us: Part 2

When I first read Bill Joy's essay "Why the future doesn't need us", I missed something. There is a contradiction between what he said and something George Orwell (Eric Blair) once said. Since Orwell was such an astounding prophet of modern times, I thought I would share this contradiction with you.

In Orwell's 1945 essay "You and the Atomic Bomb", he made the following statements:

It is a commonplace that the history of civilisation is largely the history of weapons. In particular, the connection between the discovery of gunpowder and the overthrow of feudalism by the bourgeoisie has been pointed out over and over again. And though I have no doubt exceptions can be brought forward, I think the following rule would be found generally true: that ages in which the dominant weapon is expensive or difficult to make will tend to be ages of despotism, whereas when the dominant weapon is cheap and simple, the common people have a chance. Thus, for example, tanks, battleships and bombing planes are inherently tyrannical weapons, while rifles, muskets, long-bows and hand-grenades are inherently democratic weapons. A complex weapon makes the strong stronger, while a simple weapon — so long as there is no answer to it — gives claws to the weak.

Had the atomic bomb turned out to be something as cheap and easily manufactured as a bicycle or an alarm clock, it might well have plunged us back into barbarism, but it might, on the other hand, have meant the end of national sovereignty and of the highly-centralised police state.

[You can read Orwell's essay @ http://orwell.ru/library/articles/ABomb/english/e_abomb]

In contrast, Bill Joy makes the following claims in his essay:

What was different in the 20th century? Certainly, the technologies underlying the weapons of mass destruction (WMD) - nuclear, biological, and chemical (NBC) - were powerful, and the weapons an enormous threat. But building nuclear weapons required, at least for a time, access to both rare - indeed, effectively unavailable - raw materials and highly protected information; biological and chemical weapons programs also tended to require large-scale activities.

The 21st-century technologies - genetics, nanotechnology, and robotics (GNR) - are so powerful that they can spawn whole new classes of accidents and abuses. Most dangerously, for the first time, these accidents and abuses are widely within the reach of individuals or small groups. They will not require large facilities or rare raw materials. Knowledge alone will enable the use of them.

Thus we have the possibility not just of weapons of mass destruction but of knowledge-enabled mass destruction (KMD), this destructiveness hugely amplified by the power of self-replication.

I think it is no exaggeration to say we are on the cusp of the further perfection of extreme evil, an evil whose possibility spreads well beyond that which weapons of mass destruction bequeathed to the nation-states, on to a surprising and terrible empowerment of extreme individuals.

[You can read his essay @ http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/8.04/joy.html]

Can you see the conflict between the two?

Orwell, arguably the most eloquent opponent of the corporate totalitarian state, believed that individuals had the right to possess weapons which enabled them to overthrow that state. By the way, so did Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln.

Joy, on the other hand, seems to believe that "extreme individuals" (such as patriots, perhaps?) should be denied access to such weapons, because in their hands these weapons are a "further perfection of extreme evil".

Should we be surprised at this? By his own admission, Mr. Joy is a child of DARPA and has spent most of his life working for the institutions of the corporate totalitarian state. Clearly they taught him well to never bite the hand that feeds you.