Today’s lecture started with the cool video with awesome
sound effects that Professor Enochs put a lot of time into. Although Professor
Enochs conceded of being a Luddite, his video certainly did not suggest that!
It was really thrilling! It was intriguing to know how many of the predictions
people in the 1940s had made about the future technology came true. An
international video call, printing newspaper from your computer, 3D movie, cell
phones/ walkie-talkie, and a moving sidewalk. Considering how these predictions
came true in a little more than half a century, it wouldn’t be surprising if
the technologies we dream about today, such as a space elevator, will quite
normally exist in another half a century. I believe that Moore’s law, where the
capacity of computers double every two years, will continue to apply. My
opinion is that technology has the ability to improve more and more from now
on. What I don’t know is whether these new technology will be allowed to exist.
Even now, many ethical issues exist concerning the growing technological
improvements. For example, the debate about designer babies. I don’t think that
the majority of people would allow a space elevator to exist since it will most
likely cause huge environmental damage and seems unnecessary in making human
lives easier.
Professor Enochs presented three figures: Ray Kurzweil,
Francis Fukuyama, and Bill Joy. Ray Kurzweil, a techno-optimist, Fukuyama, a
techno-pessimist while Bill Joy, an extreme techno-pessimist. I found Bill Joy
to be the most contradictory person as he was a child prodigy in computer
science, yet he is an extreme techno-pessimist. He left the company “Sun
Microsystems” he cofounded and worked for 30 years and became a partner at
KPMG, a global network of professional firms providing audit, tax, and advisory
services (from http://www.kpmg.com/global/en/pages/default.aspx).
Last class, our group could not figure out what made General Butler have
negative views on the war, and I thought that Bill Joy provided a possible
answer for this. General Butler most likely turned to dislike war because he
was in it and saw the dirty bits of it. What I find curious about Bill Joy is whether
his current job connects to his pessimistic view on technology. Does giving
advises on tax stop scientists from progressing in their research of potentially
harmful technology or help notify people about the dangers of it? Or perhaps
this is just a side-job he has…
If asked whether I am a techno-optimist or pessimist, I
think I tilt more on the pessimistic side. I wasn’t always on this side,
however. When I learned about the system of DNA or the functions of our brains,
I was so inquisitive that I was enthusiastic in studying biology in university.
One event that altered my opinion was my grandmother’s death. Near the end of
her life, my mother was told to choose between a natural death and life-support
treatment. At the time, I could not understand why people would let others die
when they could still “live”, but while I was in the hospital, I saw some
people under life-support treatment and to me, it looked so unnatural and “unhuman”
that I wondered whether there was any necessity to deliberately keep people
living when they had already surpassed their life expectancy. I can understand
that science helps us to make our lives easier, but what we have now seems
enough. I don’t feel the need for more improvements. I think we’re at the
borderline where if we go any further, “humanness” will be lost. Is it that
necessary for our lives to be that easy and without stress? I also think that
good cannot exist without bad in science. For example, the invention of a
needle that does not hurt is being invented by some scientists. It will be
hailed by little kids, but the downside is someone can inject a poison into you
and you wouldn’t feel it. I think that when people invent new things, they
really need to consider the negative sides as well instead of just being driven
by their inquisition and hunger for knowledge.
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