The hardest things to predict are those that depend on our hidden nature. It’s relatively easy to predict a new technology - just extrapolate the toys you see around you. But how will those toys play with the old animal psyche?
For instance, humans don’t regulate human power. What you can get, you get to keep. Wealth, political influence, military power all play for keeps. Sure we have laws but they regulate how you act, not how much power you have. Personal power is still one of the hallowed, hand me downs from our animal past. Somebody has to lead the pack and evolution favors those who fit in and support a strong group.
My point is that strong leaders are not seen as doing anything illegal. Hitler was seen as a ruthless opponent. He may have broken laws to get started, but once he was making the laws, he was a strong leader and not seen by most of his countrymen as abusing his power.
We don’t talk about personal power, it is somehow not appropriate. I say it is time we talked about it and consider what limits should be placed on any person who acquires power to affect the rest of us. Up until now life has disposed of our leaders and power is lost. Another set of values moves in and takes over. Our fortunes sway back and forth depending on our luck of the draw. Hitler, or Bill Gates?
I ask you how a society can be run successfully when any individual can aspire to domination of an area of life such as wealth, influence, or access to resources? I like what I know of Bill Gates but he could just as easily have been some deranged psychopath and, due to his wealth, we would have no more to say about what he did with his power than the citizens who lived under any of the tin-horn dictators of the last fifty years.
Nanotechnology is ripe for abuse by persons of power. Not today, but in ten and twenty years. The main problem is the abuser never dies. He/she just goes on accumulating power, consolidating their position and running the show. Only greater violence or more subtle attacks could cause a change whereas before the man grew old and died and things could change.
Nanotechnolgy may lead to a world we don’t enjoy if we do not wake up and think about how much personal power can be allowed in a society of free men and women.
