Joy, to the World

A techno-celebrity's childish manifesto.

Virginia Postrel from the June 2000 issue

(Page 2 of 2)

Instead, he retreats into the fantasy world of Cold War naifs. He cheers the idea, proposed after World War II, that the United Nations should have been given a monopoly on nuclear weapons research. Although he admits that Stalin would never have agreed to such a monopoly, he does not face the implications of that fact. He just wistfully refers to "distrust by the Soviets." Poor Stalin. He really needed to work on those trust issues. So, apparently, did Americans who feared Soviet intentions. Perhaps an Aspen Institute seminar would have helped.

Joy needs to spend some serious time in Baghdad. You simply cannot just will away technologies of mass destruction. With treaties and verification systems in place, 20th-century weapons aren’t that hard to hide, especially if their owners control the territory in which they’re hiding. And by Joy’s own admission, 21st-century biotech and nanotech (let’s leave aside the killer robots) will be accessible to just about anyone. You won’t have to run a country to get them. And even current research wouldn’t be that hard to conduct secretly.

Their value as weapons alone makes these technologies uncontrollable. But it isn’t the only strong incentive to ignore a total ban. Preserving life and eliminating poverty are also pretty damned powerful incentives. We’re not all Aspen-dwelling millionaires. You can bet the Chinese and Indians (a billion people each, with elites growing more prosperous and technologically savvy by the day) would pour resources into nanotechnology simply for its promise of material plenty. Add in the weapons potential, and you’ve got guaranteed development. And there will always be enough rich eccentrics who want to live forever, or to cure the diseases of their beloveds, to fund cheap biotech.

In other words, that "unprecedented" verification regime would require frequent inspection and constant surveillance of every garage, every basement, every bathroom, every mountain hideaway on the entire planet–a planet inhabited by six billion potential technology developers, not a small clique of a few dozen world-class physicists. Does Joy have any idea how big the world is? The authorities can’t find an alleged abortion-clinic bomber hiding out in the hills of North Carolina, much less destroy every cocaine facility in Central America. And there’s always Baghdad.

Bill Joy is a lot smarter than I’ll ever be. But he is also incredibly foolish, in the parochial, reality-dodging way that geniuses sometimes are. And he is willing to sacrifice an awful lot of other people’s lives and liberty to his fantasies of power and control.

If—then statements are a staple of computer programming. Here’s one to consider: "If we could agree, as a species, what we wanted, where we were headed, and why, then we would make our future much less dangerous–then we might understand what we can and should relinquish." (Emphasis added.) How, exactly, does a species of more than six billion intelligent individuals, with their own plans and purposes, agree on anything? Joy imagines the world as a small, technological elite and assumes away the problems of politics. He and his friends will just get together and agree on what to do.

Even as he invokes the unintended consequences (invariably bad) of technology, he also imagines a world in which all consequences are known in advance and life proceeds according to a master plan. That isn’t the world we live in, nor is it a world that anyone who values their own purposes would find congenial, even if it were possible.

Basing sweeping policy prescriptions on an if—then statement whose "if" doesn’t hold is bizarre. Since we can’t agree as a species on what we want, where we’re headed, and why, then we can’t understand what we can and should relinquish–no matter how much Joy wishes things were otherwise.

Indeed, that very lack of agreement, and all the threats (and promises) it entails, argues in favor of developing as much knowledge as possible. When we cannot anticipate or eliminate all hazards, we need to have as many ways to bounce back from destruction as possible–a portfolio of resilient responses. The United States relinquished biological weapons, as Joy says, but it did not eliminate the Centers for Disease Control or give up inoculating military troops.

Ultimately, Joy’s article is not a serious exploration of how to deal with the potential threats of powerful, dispersed, self-replicating technologies. That would require far greater technical depth–Could nanotechnology be developed without the ability to self-replicate indefinitely, perhaps by making it dependent on external energy sources? What would it take to maintain a constantly adapting range of immunizations?–and much, much greater social sophistication. It would mean thinking a few steps ahead, and accepting the knowledge of good and evil, not reimagining a world made up of benevolent, unambitious, incurious Buddhas.

Serious consideration of these questions also means drawing on all sorts of social scientists, immunologists, arms control experts, cognitive scientists, historians, and science fiction novelists, not limiting your research to inventors, physicists, and the Dalai Lama. Joy is right that there is nothing wrong with being a generalist. But he is far too specialized to claim that title.

If Joy’s article isn’t really about coping with dangerous technologies, what is it? Read carefully, it is exactly what the man-bites-dog press accounts promised: a screed against unpredictable change, a call for a static world, and an assault on commerce and the individual desires it serves. It is the same old attack on the open society, just wrapped in cool clothes.

"We are being propelled into this new century with no plan, no control, no brakes," writes Joy, employing the classic rhetoric of those who distrust the "chaos" created by individual creativity and freedom. And later, "We must find alternative outlets for our creative forces, beyond the culture of perpetual economic growth; this growth has largely been a blessing for several hundred years, but it has not brought us unalloyed happiness, and we must now choose between the pursuit of unrestricted and undirected growth through science and technology and the clear accompanying dangers."

No culture can provide "unalloyed happiness." No one who uses that standard should be taken seriously. If Bill Joy needs a new outlet for his creativity, something that doesn’t involve economic growth or technological innovation, he can quit his day job. But I wouldn’t recommend a career in public policy.