Re: Luddites are everywhere!

From: Max More (max@maxmore.com)
Date: Tue Mar 14 2000 - 11:22:59 MST


At 01:18 AM 3/14/00 -0500, John wrote:
>In the current issue of Wired magazine is an article I did not expect to
>see, the
>author expresses great fear over Nanotechnology, computers smarter than
>humans, and of course genetic engineering. After expressing sympathy for the
>ideas if not the methods of Ted Kaczynski, the mad Unibomber, the author
>advises
>"limiting our pursuit of certain kinds of knowledge". The really strange
>thing is
>not the content, it's pretty standard Luddite stuff, the bizarre thing is
>that the
>author is Bill Joy, chief scientist and cofounder of Sun Microsystems.
>It's a little sad to see an attitude like that in the very heart of
>Silicon Valley.

I haven't read the piece yet but will have to do so soon. I'm on a private
Wired magazine email list that includes Bill Joy and others and a
discussion of his piece is just getting going, with Charles Platt
criticizing Wired's publication of the piece, with replies so far by Howard
Rheingold, Stewart Brand, Paul Saffo, and others. Once I've read Joy's
essay, I'll be joining in. If you have specific questions, comments, or
criticisms that you'd like conveyed to Bill Joy and the others, please let
me know. (I will, of course, give appropriate credit.)

Onward!

Max
Max More, Ph.D.
President, Extropy Institute. www.extropy.org
CEO, MoreLogic Solutions. www.maxmore.com
max@maxmore.com or more@extropy.org



This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Fri Nov 01 2002 - 15:27:23 MST