The End of the World

A recent article by Bill Joy is only the most recent expression of a serious concern that computer technology could bring the world as we know it to an end.

Human-level artificial intelligence working at electronic speeds could take over its own development and move far beyond us before we could possibly respond. Nanotechnology adds a radical spatial-scale difference to this time-scale difference. Self-replication completes the picture.

Personally, I think that the threat is real, but I am also an optimist about the existence of solutions and countervailing forces. The world is very different at scales of time and space that are different from ours by orders of magnitude.

However, I believe that we have a responsibility as computer scientists and as citizens to be informed about these threats.

Essays on technological futures

Vernor Vinge. Technological singularity.
Whole Earth Review, Winter 1993.
Bill Joy. Why the future doesn't need us.
Wired 8.04: 238-262, April 2000.
- J. B. S. Haldane. On being the right size.
  Essay published 1927 or before. Widely reprinted.
- See Scientific American, September 2001, special issue on nanotechnology. In addition to interesting articles on science and technology, articles by Richard E. Smalley and George M. Whitesides give reasons why we are unlikely to face rampant self-replicating assemblers reducing the world to "gray goo".
Ray Kurzweil. The Age of Spiritual Machines.
Viking Penguin, 1999.
Jeremy Rifkin. The End of Work.
Putnam, 1995.
- See E. F. Schumacher, Good Work (Harper Colophon, 1979), for a distinguished economist's explanation for why work should be considered an output of production, not just an input.

Science fiction writers' explorations of possible futures

Kurt Vonnegut once said something like, "Science fiction writers are the most important writers in the world today. If only some of them could write!"

There are important ideas here.

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. Player Piano.
Dell Publishing Co., 1952.
Wil McCarthy. Bloom.
Ballantine, 1998.
Greg Bear. Blood Music.
ibooks, 2002.

And to keep it all in perspective...

Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett. Good Omens.
Ace Books, 1990.
Robert A. Heinlein. JOB: A Comedy of Justice.
Ballentine, 1984.

There are undoubtedly more. Please send them.

Suggestions I've received

I haven't read these yet, but I hope to get around to them.

Neil Gershenfeld. When Things Start To Think.
James Martin. After the Internet: Alien Intelligence.
Michio Kaku. Visions.
Hans Moravec. Robot.
Gregory Paul and Earl Cox. Beyond Humanity.
Frank Tipler. The Physics of Immortality.
Stephen Baxter. Manifold: Time and Manifold: Space.

BJK