Imagine a world where dogs will wear collars capable of reporting the position of man's best friend to the owners' laptop, Palm Pilot, or office computer. This is the world of embedded, ubiquitous computation "when there are hundreds or thousands of computers per human." These are not the dreams of academic futurists; most of these visions, which are likely to be achieved in the next five to ten years, are predicated on predictable advances in chip fabrication and radio and sensor design. Imagine, too, the startling facts about computing powers over the next 50 years. By 2020, a 1000-dollar computer will have the same computational power as the human brain. By 2060, the computing power will have the brainpower of 1 trillion people. Finally, it is worth remembering that over 100 million Americans have embraced, over the last two decades, the next major technological shift information technology.Ray Kurzweil, author of The Age of Spiritual Machines, traces the phenomenal expansion of information technology in a collection of laws the Law of Acceleration Returns, the Law of Increasing Chaos, and the Law of Time. According to him, as order exponentially increases, time exponentially speeds up (i.e., the time interval between salient events grow shorter as time passes. This is the Law of Accelerating Returns. In other words, as life evolves, it uses and channels energy to decrease chaos (entropy) in a system. This is the goal of all organisms on earth. As we refine our ability to decrease chaos, the amount of time it takes to radically change our modus operandi decreases exponentially. Consider the 79 episodes of Gere Roddenberry's Star Trek. What we see on our television screens is an optimistic view of life in the 23rd century, the crew's mission seeking out new life and new civilizations. But not everybody in the West shares this optimism. Why just the Western hemisphere? Mahatma Gandhi was arelentless critic of Western technology because it resulted in enormous hardship for the people living in rural areas. Often, he equated industrialism with Westernism. The Urdu poet Mohammad Iqbal warned long ago hai dil ke liye maut machinon ki hukumat (the enslavement of man by the machine sounds the death-knell of humanity). This idea the violent struggle between humans and machines resulting in the enslavement of the human race is beautifully portrayed in the film The Matrix. Iqbal took a leaf out of small groups of artisans during the industrial revolution in England, banded together around the probably fictional character Ned Ludd. Its members would go out at night and secretly destroy fancy new textile machines that were putting the skilled artisans out of business. Today, the Luddites still exist as neo-Luddites. Their detractors would say that they litter Internet newsgroups with anti-technology material. I do not know if Bill Joy, a well-respected industry leader, is regarded as a neo-Luddite ornot, but his views are widely discussed in the US. According to him, the 21st century technologies of genetic, nanotechnolgy and robotics (GNR) may well fall into wrong hands. Such a development would result in destruction previously unimaginable except via nuclear, biological, or chemical weapons (NBC). The New York Times (March 13, 2000) described Bill Joy's fears similar to those faced by many of those who developed the atomic bomb: "Joy suggests parallels between the ethical dilemma faced by nuclear physicists in the invention and the use of the atomic bombs and similar challenges facing technologists today." Bill Joy himself argues that the similarity is real because GNR technologies can be designed so that they can replicate themselves, making whatever destruction they cause hard to stop.Sure, we need to pay heed to such warnings. At the same time, Ray Ku-rzweil describes the relentless march of life and its principle agent of advancement, evolution. In his ju-dgment, the Law of Accelerating Returns will co- ntinue to guarantee the advancement of conscious beings. His views compel the reader to consider life as the only force in the universe capable of combating increasing entropy in a system, as stated by the second law of thermodynamics. Life forms channel energy to reduce chaos. One particular life form, humans, have developed consciousness, the ability to process inputs and create new, more ordered outputs based on current and past experiences. Consciousness has led to the development of technology and tools that allow unprecedented control over our natural environment (both the living and non-living portion).The pursuit of knowledge need not be curtailed. Life has reached a point where evolutionary advancement needs a new mechanism for growth. Kurzweil leads us to believe that technological progression is impossible to stop. If his prediction is right, you will soon hear of millions of people having many pieces of technology installed in their bodies in order to improve their quality of life. According to his estimate, within the next 75 years many people around the globe would have completed the process of merging with machines, leaving behind their physical body. Under such conditions, natural selection and genetic mutation will no longer be necessary as the primary agents of evolution. What a dreadful prospect!We should educate the people and introduce safeguards against GNR weapons, says Kurzweil and his camp followers. Fair enough! But who will take the lead in preventing technology falling into the wrong hands? Who defines the "wrong hands?" Once a consensus is reached on this vexed issue, who will secure guarantees for the misuse of technology? The US? The European Union? The United Nations? Nobody really knows. I owe many of these ideas to my former American student, Michael Jansen. I believe he would like me to leave you with a summary of some key issues that are at the heart of the contemporary debate on the future role of technologies. Will they continue to be subservient (Gene Roddenberry)? Will they ultimately lead, as suggested by the Luddites, to the downfall and destruction of humanity? Will a singular machine intelligence dominate and subjugate its slower human creators through its own volition or through the prodding of an elite group of humans? Yes, some technologies are too risky. If so, arguesBill Joy, we should do something about it. Let me know what you think. It is critical, Michael Jansen stated, that we do not allow fear of the future to drive our decision-making pr-ocess. Rather, these discussions should be the impetus for education and democratisation of education. It was he who told me emphatically: "Such actions will ensure continued prosperity for ourselves and our progeny, regardless of how different these late 21st-century humans operate as compared to us today."
