Survival Skills for 21st Century Technological Adavncement
Vigilence
Also known as paranoia, this trait is an important one. As technology becomes more and more complex, those who do not understand it fall farther and farther behind. And thus, the decision-making power falls farther and farther away from most people. They don’t mind because most technology sounds pretty good; we are unreasonably optimistic because it easier to be optimistic, as Paul Virilio has pointed out; resistant bacteria and radiation are uncommon side effects of a generally beneficial social draught. But without information we will not be able to reflect, or to help to watchdog technology as it develops. As Bill Joy, a well-known American computer scientist, said, scientists aren’t thinking about the problems. So lay people have to keep themselves informed unless they want to be eaten alive by nanobots. It is as John Smart, , said: “Let us face this openly, and investigate it actively, so that we may guide these developments as wisely as possible.” We must all be as paranoid about technology as Fox Mulder was of the government. Otherwise, it will be as the Unabomber said, instead: “Due to improved techniques the elite will have great control over the masses . . .” The simple message to take away from this, however, is that we can’t forget that technology can be bad, and so we have to keep up with it. It should be commonsense to examine technology as it develops and to identify its potential problems: “I remember from my childhood that my grandmother was strongly against the overuse of antibiotics. She had worked since before the first World War as a nurse and had a commonsense attitude that taking antibiotics, unless they were absolutely necessary, was bad for you. It is not that she was an enemy of progress . . . But she, like many levelheaded people, would probably think it greatly arrogant for us, now, to be designing a robotic “replacement species,” when we obviously have so much trouble making relatively simple things work, and so much trouble managing—or even understanding—ourselves” (Bill Joy, from his essay “Why the Future Doesn’t Need Us.”)