I made sure to directly quote Bill Joy only because this seems to be one topic where we may possibly agree. The concept of KMD or Knowledge-enabled Mass Destruction to me basically means we are the constructors of our own demise. If we continuously search for this information, we accumulate facts that may possibly be things we were never destined to know. By becoming submissive to this ideal, we subject ourselves to everything that comes our way. If computer knowledge comes from forcing issues to be accepted, then only we are responsible for the outcome.
This evil that
Bill Joy speaks of can only be knowledge. As much as we overanalyze
its glory and the new technologies that may possibly arise from it, we
sometimes fail to realize its downfalls. Joy claims he was aware
of the moral dilemmas surrounding technology’s consequences in fields like
weapons research. (243) He did not expect to confront such issues
in his own field, or at least not so soon. A large problem is dismissing
problems now seen as diminutive, or irrelevant. It is these issues
that we will most likely regret not having paid close attention to.
“Failing to understand the consequences of our inventions while we are
in the rapture of discovery and innovation seems to be a common fault of
scientists and technologists; we have long been driven by the overarching
desire to know that is the nature of science’s quest, not stopping to notice
that the progress to newer and more powerful technologies can take on a
life of its own”(Joy 243).