By Alan Lightman
"A staff of remarkably penetrating, frank, and specialist scientists, techno-wizards, activists, and writers bring up provocative questions about what's won and what's misplaced in a global enthralled via know-how during this splendidly soulful discussion board on lifestyles within the 'Wired World.' " -BOOKLIST Biotechnology, Cloning, Robotics, Nanotechnology... At a time whilst clinical and technological breakthroughs maintain our eyes keen on the newest software program improvements or the latest cell-phone wizardry, a bunch of ultra-modern such a lot leading edge thinkers are taking a look past the horizon to discover either the promise and the peril of our technological destiny. Human ingenuity has granted us a global of extraordinary own strength -- allowing us to speak immediately with somebody anyplace at the globe, to move ourselves in either genuine and digital worlds to foreign places conveniently, to fill our bellies with engineered commodities as soon as to be had to simply a privileged elite. via our applied sciences, we have now sought to unfastened ourselves from the shackles of nature and turn into its grasp. but technological know-how and know-how always remodel our adventure and society in ways in which usually appear to be past our keep watch over. this present day, diversified components of study and innovation are advancing synergistically, multiplying the speed and significance of technological and societal swap, with effects that nobody can are expecting. residing with the Genie explores the origins, nature, and which means of such switch, and our skill to manipulate it. because the strength of know-how maintains to speed up, who, this publication asks, would be the grasp of whom? In residing with the Genie, prime writers and thinkers come jointly to confront this query from many views, together with: Richard Powers's whimsical research of the bounds of man-made intelligence; Philip Kitcher's war of words of the ethical implications of technology; Richard Rhodes's exploration of the function of know-how in lowering violence; Shiv Visvanathan's research of technology's genocidal power; Lori Andrews's insights into the search for human genetic enhancement; Alan Lightman's reflections on how know-how adjustments the adventure of our humanness. those and ten different provocative essays open the door to a brand new discussion on how, within the quest for human mastery, know-how should be altering what it capability to be human, in methods we scarcely understand.
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Additional info for Living with the Genie: Essays On Technology And The Quest For Human Mastery
Sample text
Here was one of the technology world’s leading figures addressing new and dire emerging dangers from future technology. It was reminiscent of the attention that George Soros, the currency arbitrager and archcapitalist, received when he made vaguely critical comments about the excesses of unrestrained capitalism, although the “Bill Joy” controversy became far more intense. The New York Times cited about , articles commenting on and discussing Bill’s article, more than any other article in the history of commentary on technology issues.
Nanobots will be introduced without surgery, essentially just by PROMISE AND PERIL 51 52 Ray Kurzweil injecting or even swallowing them. They can all be directed to leave, so the process is easily reversible. They are programmable, in that they can provide virtual reality one minute and a variety of brain extensions the next. They can change their configuration and alter their software. Perhaps most importantly, they are massively distributed and therefore can take up billions or trillions of positions throughout the brain, whereas a surgically introduced neural implant can be placed in only one or at most a few locations.
In the case of humans, however, this emotional substrate can be amplified tremendously through our culture and language, reinforced and solidified with words and slogans, images and concepts, and made into something quite solid, potent, and long-lived—much more so than passing emotional states observed among chimpanzees in a social group, for instance. Our symbolic language enables us to define and exaggerate the differences between “us” and “them,” lionizing our own group while demonizing the other.