<A HREF="http://www.kurzweilai.net/meme/frame.html?main=/articles/art0358.html">http://www.kurzweilai.net/meme/frame.html?main=/articles/art0358.html
Ray </A>>Kurzweil</A> addresses questions presented at Are We Becoming an Endangered >
Species</A>? >Technology</A> and >Ethics</A> in the 21st Century, a conference on >
technology</A> and >ethics</A> sponsored by Washington National Cathedral. Other
panelists are >Anne Foerst</A>, >Bill Joy</A> and Bill Mckibben.
Originally presented on November 19, 2001 at Washington National Cathedral.
Posted on KurzweilAI.net November 19, 2001.
<A HREF="http://www.kurzweilai.net/meme/frame.html?main=/articles/art0358.html">Ray </A>>Kurzweil</A>: Questions and Answers
<<Ray >Kurzweil</A>, how do you respond to Mr. Joy's concerns? Do scientific and
technological advances pose a real threat to humanity, or do they promise to
enhance life?
The answer is both, and we don't have to look further than today to see what
I call the deeply intertwined promise and peril of >technology</A>.Imagine going
back in time, let's say a couple hundred years, and describing the dangers
that lay ahead, perils such as weapons capable of destroying all mammalian
life on >Earth</A>. People in the eighteenth century listening to this litany of
dangers, assuming they believed you, would probably think it mad to take such
risks.And then you could go on and describe the actual suffering that lay
ahead, for example 100 million people killed in two great twentieth-century
world wars, made possible by >technology</A>, and so on. Suppose further that we
provide these people circa eighteenth century a choice to relinquish these
then >future</A> technologies, they just might choose to do so, particularly if we
were to emphasize the painful side of the equation...>>
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