From: Spudboy100@aol.com
Date: Mon May 27 2002 - 11:20:40 MDT
Steve Nichols Opined:
<<This posting lacks balance & perspective. No doubt extropians and
fundamentalist
transhumans will call me a neo-luddite for drawing attention to futurologist
Ian Pearson
(BT exact technologies) article in this week's Sunday Times warning of
dangers in
nanotechnology, AI, and biotechs that are capable of making life on earth
extinct.>>
Yes, this is my analysis of what is going on. Sometimes the truth is not
balanced and contains the perspective you desire of others.
<<I think we have to put safety ahead of mindless sci-fantasy optimism, and
want to point
out that I object to emotive and irrelevent terms like "luddite" that are
used incorrectly in
this debate. Pearson and even Greenpeace & ecology movement are using
empirical data
and arguments and are not "anti-science" anti-rational or even
anti-progress.>>
I am rarely in favor of science fantasy if this is a serious treatment of
technologu, especially energy technology. I am fully in favor or wind power,
and solar, and wish they were more potent, more energetic, more affordable.
But they are what they are, and I cannot influence how they behave in nature,
society, and the economy.
Greenpeace, animal activists, anti-globalists have, in the recent past even
objected to some "green" solutions, as damaging the environment. Thus, one
may fairly conclude that they hate all aspects of the modern world.
<<What we need is a middle way in advance. We should jettison tried & tested
techniques
in favour of untested, speculative and potentially lethal latest innovations
simply to
keep up with fashion. And what is wrong with concentrating on eco-friendly
science
such as wind-power & renewables ... green science can be just as
technologically
advanced, challenging and innovative as the 'blue sky' fads such as genetics
& nano-tech.
Steve Nichols>>
Nobody, I have read in the last few years, in this newsgroup, has advocated
the jettisoning of tried and tested techniques. If we had nanotechnology to
use as a energy producer, or and a manufacturing method; then one might
garner stronger opinions. So far, nanotech is a fascinating series of
technologies that will take quite a few decades to arrive, and perhaps even
more to be effective.
Nobody on this list is against renewable energy, they simply have been
disappointed by the slow progress in efficieny and implementation. The
Cruddites claim to want such technology, in the realm of energy, but
criticize it's implementation. To the press (an archaic word) they advocate
wind and solar; on their own newsgroups and publications, they oppose it
also.
With the Cruddites, we are speaking hudden agendas here. Nuclear fission
seems too expensive, too susceptible to terrorist attack (especially in the
public mind), and less dedicated, as an industry, to technical progress. So
its back to the uses of fossil fuels, of which there seems to be a
super-abundance of. The use of fossil fuels, is a thread all its own!
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