| Bill Joy concludes “ Why the Future Doesn’t Need Us” with a dose of reality. He starts off by reflecting on his grandmother’s views against the overuse of antibiotics during the era of the World Wars. She was an “enemy of progress,” who would be against the work of scientists who design what he calls the “ robotic “replacement species”” of our time (248). Joy states that she would think that are crazy to go through the trouble of making simple things work while also trying to handle ourselves. He also mentions that humans should learn from their mistakes of the past, such as creating the atomic bomb. The atomic bomb was only a creation made to give Americans an “illusion of illimitable power” that was responsible for our societies troubles (250). The creators of the latest advancements are like those of the past, “driven by great rewards and global competition” in spite of the dangers their creations could generate. John Leslie answers how much danger we face concluding that “the risk of human extinction is [about] thirty percent”(254). Although Ray Kurzweil feels that we still have a chance with the “ caveat [of being] optimistic”(254). Our species fate on earth as well as the galaxies fate is somewhat connected, and there are many ideas about how they will end. One idea is that our species should move beyond Earth and colonize in on other galaxies using the von Neumann probes. Another idea is that a series of shields should be erected, as the Strategic Defensive Initiative design of Ronald Regan, to defend against the hazardous technologies. Joy suggests that both of these possibilities are either “undesirable or unachievable or both”(254). Instead of those two ideas he favors his own idea of relinquishment. He feels that in order to set a limit on the dangerous advancements that we should limit our quest of obtaining certain information. It is our “competitive need to know” that hinders us to the dangers of GNR technologies (256) If we, as a species, can come to an agreement and act more presciently about where we are headed, we can survive these technologies. Even though “verifying relinquishment will be a difficult problem, [it won’t be an] unsolvable one”(257). Our worries and arguments are what he considers “old hat”. He has always believed that creating reliable software could contribute in making the world a better place. If he were to oppose this thought then he would be “obligated to stop his work,” and realizes that such a day could come (262). All this leaves him melancholic, however, he feels that for him the course of action is bittersweet. |