Last month still has me reeling. First I learn I may live forever. Kurzweil has me truly believing. Then I learn we’re all going to die in 2030. That’s when Bill Joy suggests a bright but disgruntled teenager may have the ability to turn the biosphere to dust.
So do I floss or don’t I floss?
A BIT MORE JOY
. . . because of the recent rapid and radical progress in molecular electronics – where individual atoms and molecules replace lithographically drawn transistors – and related nanoscale technologies, we should be able to meet or exceed the Moore’s law rate of progress for another 30 years. By 2030, we are likely to be able to build machines, in quantity, a million times as powerful as the personal computers of today – sufficient to implement the dreams of Kurzweil and Moravec [and me].
As this enormous computing power is combined with the manipulative advances of the physical sciences and the new, deep understandings in genetics, enormous transformative power is being unleashed. These combinations open up the opportunity to completely redesign the world, for better or worse: The replicating and evolving processes that have been confined to the natural world are about to become realms of human endeavor.
Read it for yourself.
