Ronald Bailey Says Let the Techstorm Rip
A review of A Dangerous Master: How to Keep Technology from Slipping Beyond Our Control
The Yale bioethicist Wendell Wallach does not feel future glee. In A Dangerous Master, he worries that our "incessant outpouring of groundbreaking discoveries and tools" are a rising "techstorm" that will soon be "dangerously beyond our control." The question at the heart of his book is whether "we, humanity as a whole, have the intelligence to navigate the promise and perils of technological innovation." Like so many other foes of permissionless innovation, Wallach predicts that accelerating technological progress will increase crises and disasters. Reason Science Correspondent Ronald Bailey argues that history suggests just the opposite.