www.heresy.com
Ferkiss, Victor
welfare reform is "self-sufficiency," that Campaign for Jobs and Income Support, "Poverty is the great invisible prob- idea is "not being adequately reflected" which was...
...Hackers are its natural ty...
...Universal on the campaign trail, compassion...
...Now if there is good news in any nomenon," Bhargava says, "is that it's thanks to good economic times...
...Yet A second lurking danger is that humans, wittingly or not, his salient essay has a great deal to say about our present will one day download their consciousness into robots, just impasse...
...off the rolls, as opposed to the failure to grams that are supposed to have none...
...2000, Washington Post Writers Group the Future Doesn't Need Us," Joy argues that we are making humans an "endangered species," and that it is time to "reVictor Ferkiss think our utopian choices...
...Will Attn: Search Committee 475 Riverside Drive, Room 405 they be aware of it...
...The inter- of times for programs to alleviate poverpoor about what help was available to esting thing about the devolution phe- ty...
...11 easier to create destructive uses for nanotechnology than constructive ones...
...The clergy must abomber Manifesto of Ted Kaczynski, which presents two albe representative of the faithful...
...Is this possible...
...Religion has been replaced by science as the source as we now download computer data, which will lead to the of apocalyptic dread, and the age-old temptation to grasp at eventual loss of our humanity...
...According to Moravec, robots are another species, goods in themselves, and that the Internet should remain a one in competition-necessarily successful-with humanitotally self-regulating community...
...The Campaign is a coalition of there hasn't been much political presWhat Bell and her co-author, Carson about a thousand community groups, sure from the people affected...
...And how devoted are we are being denied access to these pro- sion of benefits for those who work but to that sentiment now roaringly popular grams are people who work," says Deep- are still trapped in poverty...
...While pessimistic, Joy believes there is some basis for hope...
...Since its masses will no longer be needed...
...Such a prospect Benefits include: A four-day workweek (Monday- flies in the face of the age-old quest of Western science for Thursday) and employer-funded health insurance and pension plan...
...forced to merge with robots, sacrificing our identity for the Styled by Fortune "the Edison of the Internet," Bill Joy is promise of virtual immortality...
...welfare reform is "self-sufficiency," that Campaign for Jobs and Income Support, "Poverty is the great invisible probidea is "not being adequately reflected" which was launched this month at a lem in the national discourse," Bhargava in actual administration of the programs, meeting in Chicago and sponsored the says...
...Genetic engineering will present ing saucers have replaced angels in the popular imaginamultiple problems, not only the prospect of human cloning- tion, and space travel has become the cornerstone of our new still far off-but of unanticipated consequences, such as mythology...
...If Whereas older methods of mass destruction, such as the Searle is right-despite the perils created by genetic engiatom bomb, required huge operations that were relatively neering and human-robot hybrids-humanity has a future...
...He notes that the world's leaders have virtually abandoned The business manager works with the staff on bud- the drive to develop new weapons of mass destruction...
...be ordained, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger told L' Joy notes that Kurzweil quotes extensively from the UnW Osservatore Romano today...
...to make it hard for eligible people to get unleashing a wave of activism by the This ought to be the most promising benefits...
...And Washington will necessarily much advertised commitment to the be lifted out of poverty...
...They are demon- ernment assistance is now flowing to the cause of the working poor at the cen- strating "a new level of sophistication those who work-meaning that the vast ter of the national debate...
...Business Manager What can be done to protect against these dangers...
...Still, geting and finance, marketing and promotion, circu- to relinquish GNR will be far more complicated...
...versity and the author of Robot: Mere Machine to Dependent It shares a libertarian belief that innovation and skill are Mind...
...Still, in the latter case, in the April issue of Wired magazine that, if unchecked, tech- large systems will continue to be under the sway of elites, nology would bring human society to extinction, the scien- and once machines can do the work the elites require, the tific-technological community was astounded...
...react to the technological perils of the twenty-first century...
...And the Strege-Flora, found were many cases of including faith-based and neighborhood problem is usually defined by the sucstates and localities violating federal rules organizations...
...But in the majority of voters approve of the values ly, those who were most critical of the end, he says, these groups will also look now embedded in the programs...
...inception, Wired has been the cheerleader for the new in- Now enter thinkers like Hans Moravec, founder of the formation era, exulting in an Internet-fueled transformation world's largest robotics program at Carnegie Mellon Uniof human life and an era of unparalleled economic growth...
...Whether machines can attain self-conNew York, NY 10115 sciousness is the greatest controversy in the artificial intelligence community...
...He fails to touch on how people in these groups will ness "amplified by the power of self-replication...
...It will relation, fundraising, development, and general business matters, as well as supervising the business staff...
...Whether we will so choose is an entirely GNR)-will not require large facilities or rare raw materials...
...Joy believes we must abandon our present course: "The only reThis is a terrific job for someone with promotion and alistic alternative I see is relinquishment: to limit developbusiness skills who is committed to working with a ment of the technologies that are too dangerous, by limiting small staff to enhance the financial future of the magour pursuit of certain kinds of knowledge...
...In his Wired article, "Why duce themselves, without requiring human intervention...
...As humans are squeezed toward extinction, we will be heroes...
...With unprecedented knowledge at the command of ro- human beings who are, and will continue to be, dirt poor, bots, humans will become expendable...
...If we're welfare bill when it passed may end up to Washington to make sure states run not willing to do more to help the worksaving welfare reform by insisting that programs for the working poor by the ing poor, what does that say about our those willing to labor hard for low wages rules...
...It's not being talked about because she says...
...To understand Joy's new-found fears, one must look at WWW.HERESY.COM their origin...
...The key Interested applicants should send a resume and a cover question concerns robotic self-replication...
...The people who play a large role in any serious expan- value of work...
...Joy traces his unease to a meeting with Ray Kurzweil, inventor of the first reading machine for the blind and author of The Age of Intelligent Machines...
...Paradoxical- about public policy politics...
...Simi- completely (since they will make better decisions), or we larly, when Bill Joy, computer guru extraordinaire, wrote act to maintain control over them...
...different matter...
...Kurzweil foresees-and omen, married men, and active gays should all welcomes-an era in which humans will fuse with robots...
...El ak Bhargava, director of the National health care would be a nice place to start...
...Someday, mobile letter to: robots, nano or full-sized, may be able to acquire the physCommonweal ical materials necessary for their own reproduction...
...Its goal is to put poverty cess of welfare reform in getting people by imposing waiting periods for pro- back on the national agenda," he says...
...Joy notes that Berkeley philosopher E-Mail: Commonweal@msn.com John Searle-himself not a theist-argues, on philosophical grounds, that machines cannot become conscious, that all they can do is computation [see Bernard Prusak, page 281...
...As Carl Jung pointed out long ago, flyreplicated electronically...
...Nanotechnology is further along than we once ly inspired civilization may, in the final analysis, be the deeprealized, says Joy, and "as with nuclear technology, it is far er question underpinning Joy's amazing apostasy...
...What most alarms Joy, however, is Victor Ferkiss, a long-time contributor, is the author of The FuGNR's "power of destructive self-replication...
...and misinforming the working poor and their supporters...
...Are Joy's fears-let alone his hopes-justified...
...In the twen- ture of Technological Civilization...
...Previous experience with a magazine, small business, and/or nonprofit organization is necessary...
...scientists and engineers to eschew-and even report-work on "knowledge-enabled mass destruction...
...Commonweal 9 May 19, 2000 tieth century, nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons were military in nature, and were developed primarily in COMMONWEAL government laboratories...
...a founder and now chief scientist for Sun Microsystems, Joy believes rising computer power will create an intelliand former cochairman of a presidential commission on the gent robot by 2030, and that eventually robots will reprofuture of information technology...
...study...
...Instead, knowledge alone will enable their production and Joy's discussion does not consider the vast proportion of use...
...Whether, in order to have a future, we will need those already associated with altered crops, migration across to revive the old categories and myths that have traditionalspecies, etc...
...The chemical interactions immortality has yielded to the scientific quest for that goal of neurons in the brian, Kurzweil has speculated, can be through technology...
...His new dystopian vision is rooted in his utopiA computer pioneer's crisis of faith anism...
...One can ternatives: either humans allow machines to take over imagine the reactions such a statement would elicit...
...But in GNR, we are aggressively pursuing powerful new technologies "within the now unchallenged system of global capitalism and its manifold fiis hiring a new nancial incentives and competitive pressures...
...azine...
...Commonweal 1 0 May 19, 2000...
...easy to detect, twenty-first-century technologies-genetics, Human choice-expressed through the workings of organanotechnology (extremely small devices operating at the nized society-will be capable of controlling unbridled sciatomic level), and robotics (these three collectively known as ence-based change...
...The old of this, it is that community groups really put the ball in the court of the com- welfare system is dead and most govaround the nation are organizing to put munity organizations...
...Com- quire not only an unprecedented system of verification but puter literacy and familiarity with Excel and Access also a powerful code of ethical conduct capable of forcing are required...
...knowledge and domination...
...The devolution of power to the states, make much of a dent in the poverty creating cumbersome application rules an idea associated with conservatives, is rate...
...Public coffers at all levels are bulging, them...
...Thus, writes Joy, we and those in the thrall of deadly ethnic and religious pasface "knowledge-enabled mass destruction," a destructive- sions...
Vol. 127 • May 2000 • No. 10
