h+ Magazine

Nanotechnology is very intertwined with the future of all technology.  But can we disregard the potential dangers it might pose?

An overview of science news from the last week, and some older news items of interest. Includes news on nanotechnology, regenerative medicine, stem cells, and metamaterials.

The question of boosting the intelligence of animals other than humans, to the level of self-awareness and consciousness, is one that cannot be considered in isolation from the general process at work in the social and speculative movement known as Transhumanism.

Science news overview: new neutrino detector taller than Dubai tower, Jupiter’s core is liquefying, antimatter sail for space missions, and more.

In an h+ magazine exclusive, Paul Raven asks Eric Drexler some questions following his Inaugural Lecture for the Oxford Martin Programme on the Impacts of Future Technology.

It might be possible to build a femtocomputer along lines vaguely similar to current DNA computers…

My goal in this essay is an ambitious one: to show how the properties of quarks and gluons can be used (in principle) to perform computation at the femtometer (i.e. 10^-15 meter) scale. This is admittedly highly speculative and theoretical material — but it’s all within the domain of science, and given the reality of exponential advance, may well become practical technology sometime in this century.

At a recent TED Conference, a dinner was organized by the Edge Foundation, a think tank and nonprofit that celebrates big ideas. The theme of the evening was the “New Age of Wonder,” and the discussion drew comparisons to the Romantic Age, the period between 1770 and 1830 when science and art were friends. It was a time when astronomers and poets were in some ways indistinguishable, as artists were inspired by science’s intoxicating sense of awe and wonder. Somewhere down the line, however, these two worlds became disjointed.

“Existential risk” refers to the risk that the human race as a whole might be annihilated. In other words: human extinction risk, or species-level genocide. This is an important concept because, as terrible at it would be if 90% of the human race were annihilated, wiping out 100% is a whole different matter.

Existential risk is not a fully well defined notion, because as transhumanist technologies advance, the border between human and nonhuman becomes increasingly difficult to distinguish. If humans somehow voluntarily “transcend” their humanity and become superhuman, this seems a different sort of scenario than everyone being nuked to death. However, philosophical concerns aside, there are sufficiently many clear potential avenues to human extinction to make the “existential risk” concept valuable — including nanotech arms races, risks associated with unethical superhuman AIs, and more mundane risks involving biological or nuclear warfare. While one doesn’t wish to approach the future with an attitude of fearfulness, it’s also important to keep our eyes open to the very real dangers that loom.

In the months before 9/11, I had a chat with a pal about toting heat:

Me: “So you think everyone should have a gun?”
Him: “Yes. Everyone has the right to carry any weapon. The right to bear arms.”
Me: “What if someone wanted to tote a fully-automatic in the shopping mall?”
Him: “Even a machine gun. We’ve got the right. You should be able to have a motherfucking nuclear bomb if you want to.”

Ben Goertzel converses with Hugo de Garis on his transhumanist argument for the reality of a Creator.