From: Marc Forrester (SL4@mharr.force9.co.uk)
Date: Mon Apr 17 2000 - 09:58:30 MDT
Watching Jean-Michel Jarre's 'Egypt 2000' Millenium Concert last night,
I was struck by a spark of hope. Here was a guy with some obviously
transhuman sensibilities staging a show filled with flames, explosions,
and coherent radiation beams, classical weapons technology, but used
purely for fun and profit. Which is nice, but more interestingly,
the most recent of the three, the laser, is actually very difficult
to use as a weapon, and has seen much earlier adoption as an engine
of communication, computing, healing, and more recently, creation.
Is this a trend? As we focus more on sophisticated short range,
low energy applications of our ideas in favour of the robustness,
range, and brute power required to destroy our perceived enemies,
will bio and nano technologies and the ultratechnologies they
enable have their earliest impact on computers and the internet,
then medicine and industry, with dangerously destructive options
arriving later, when defensive techniques are already established?
Not to be relied on, obviously, but it seems at least feasible
that as we investigate ever smaller and more fundamental universal
forces it actually becomes ever easier to create than to destroy..
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