Ah yes, Bill's essay on the dangers of the future. The first time I read it I was struck not by the message but by the tone. Similar to the tone someone uses when they buy their first (and perhaps only) gun in the USA and, realizing how straight forward it was, they realize that anyone could just walk up to them and shoot them because well they could easily get their own gun.
The world is a big and generally ambivalent place. It has been in our (by which I mean humans) power to render it uninhabitable for over 50 years now, and yet still we haven't. We may at some point, but so far so good.
But as adults, you have to choose. You can choose not to drive on the freeways, knowing that at any time you could be mowed down by a drunk driver or someone texting, or you can go into it with your eyes open and your precautions in place. It is important to know that you can be killed while driving in order to respect what needs to be done (and not done) when you are behind the wheel of a car. If you don't respect that, you die.
So it is with the world at large. And the great "information hiding"[1] campaign not withstanding, its important to know how technology can kill you so as to know when it is likely to.
I do believe at some point we'll be able to talk to machines directly with your brain. We do that today with sound and visual images, eliminating the ears and eyes in the path is a matter of understanding the API. A friend of mine, points out that the first person to become part of a computer will be able to out perform everyone else, if they are not a nice person they will prevent others from getting the same advantage.
But what is their advantage? They can make more money than you and me? Lots of people already have that. They can write code faster? better? Sure there are meglomaniacs, we need to watch out for those folks and shut them down, but there are bad drivers too.
We can run away, but it doesn't change what is. The older you get it seems the more you recognize the futility of that.
[1] Somewhere in the mid-90's it occurred to people you could just learn all this stuff that was dangerous and they have been on a mission ever since to carefully remove information from the system. The trick is to do it slowly and carefully to avoid the Striesand effect, but it continues to this day. Chemistry sets are a good exemplar.
The world is a big and generally ambivalent place. It has been in our (by which I mean humans) power to render it uninhabitable for over 50 years now, and yet still we haven't. We may at some point, but so far so good.
But as adults, you have to choose. You can choose not to drive on the freeways, knowing that at any time you could be mowed down by a drunk driver or someone texting, or you can go into it with your eyes open and your precautions in place. It is important to know that you can be killed while driving in order to respect what needs to be done (and not done) when you are behind the wheel of a car. If you don't respect that, you die.
So it is with the world at large. And the great "information hiding"[1] campaign not withstanding, its important to know how technology can kill you so as to know when it is likely to.
I do believe at some point we'll be able to talk to machines directly with your brain. We do that today with sound and visual images, eliminating the ears and eyes in the path is a matter of understanding the API. A friend of mine, points out that the first person to become part of a computer will be able to out perform everyone else, if they are not a nice person they will prevent others from getting the same advantage.
But what is their advantage? They can make more money than you and me? Lots of people already have that. They can write code faster? better? Sure there are meglomaniacs, we need to watch out for those folks and shut them down, but there are bad drivers too.
We can run away, but it doesn't change what is. The older you get it seems the more you recognize the futility of that.
[1] Somewhere in the mid-90's it occurred to people you could just learn all this stuff that was dangerous and they have been on a mission ever since to carefully remove information from the system. The trick is to do it slowly and carefully to avoid the Striesand effect, but it continues to this day. Chemistry sets are a good exemplar.