In a perceptive essay about how computer-driven high finance and our blind faith in technology has led us to the edge of economic Armageddon, Richard Dooling quotes a seminal thinker of the recent past on the threat our civilization faced from our misplaced faith in technology:
But we are suggesting neither that the human race would voluntarily turn power over to the machines nor that the machines would willfully seize power. What we do suggest is that the human race might easily permit itself to drift into a position of such dependence on the machines that it would have no practical choice but to accept all of the machines' decisions. ... Eventually a stage may be reached at which the decisions necessary to keep the system running will be so complex that human beings will be incapable of making them intelligently. At that stage the machines will be in effective control. People won't be able to just turn the machines off, because they will be so dependent on them that turning them off would amount to suicide.
Know who said that? You're not going to believe it.
Concludes Dooling:
Yes, Theodore Kaczinski was a homicidal psychopath and a paranoid kook, but he was also a bloodhound when it came to scenting all of the horrors technology holds in store for us. Hence his mission to kill technologists before machines commenced what he believed would be their inevitable reign of terror.We are living, we have long been told, in the Information Age. Yet now we are faced with the sickening suspicion that technology has run ahead of us. Man is a fire-stealing animal, and we can't help building machines and machine intelligences, even if, from time to time, we use them not only to outsmart ourselves but to bring us right up to the doorstep of Doom.
We are still fearful, superstitious and all-too-human creatures. At times, we forget the magnitude of the havoc we can wreak by off-loading our minds onto super-intelligent machines, that is, until they run away from us, like mad sorcerers' apprentices, and drag us up to the precipice for a look down into the abyss.
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Rombald, Seems a little short-sighted to say faster than light travel is impossible considering how little we understand about the working of our universe. I think, given a long enough timeline, we will figure it out - even if we don't actually travel FTL but circumvent it through some means. Whether or not or species (read: current civilation) can endure long enough to realize that inevitability makes this a question of "when" and not one of "if".
I do agree that scarcity of resources in the mother of competition for survival and that natural progression will eventually play out in the human/machine dynamic.
I think we are on some path towards a co-dependent relationship and eventually (if, unfortunately) we will realize one day that the whole of society cannot function without our machine counterparts. Will that spell destruction for any random individual being? Doubtful, but ultimately dependent on too many factors to accurately predict. If there is any semblance of a natural ecosystem down the road when such events will allegedly transpire, I think a return to nature would definitely support at least some level of human life. Let's just hope that Kevin Costner doesn't have to drink his own urine.
Cell phones and related technologies are an example of technology run-a-muck. I laugh when people talk about being slaves to their blackberry or cell phone.
Turn the darn thing off. No one is so important that he/she can't be unavailable for an hour or two. If it's an extreme emergency a human can find you (me).
technolgy can and has become mind and body snatchers WAKE UP AMERICA !
As an engineering student in the 1980's, I saw the transition from using computers as computing tools to modeling tools. Many students could not, even back then, explain the modeling algorithms.
My father was a chemical engineer (now retired). I remember that in the late 80s he began to express his disgust with many of the young engineers whom his company was interviewing and hiring. He said, "They don't know how to do wet chemistry anymore! They can't do anything unless they see it on a screen!"
Anonymous,
I am lucky that I have the sort of job where I don't need to be on-call constantly (unless someone decides that there is a need for 24/7 Latin expertise ;-) ). But unfortunately there are many people who can't just "turn the darn thing off", because it's a condition of their job that they be available all the time. It's easy to say that "no one is so important that he/she can't be available for an hour or two," and philosophically I agree. But to many employers today, perpetual availability seems increasingly to be a condition of employment.
It seems to be an anthropomorphism to talk about "machines" any differently than tools, housing, fire, the wheel, whatever. No other living thing survives without dependence on something totally outside itself - the environment, prey, etc.
For almost all living things, there is ZERO control at all over these dependencies. What is notable is NOT that we have no control, but that we actually exert ANY control at all.
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