I worry about the future as much as I speculate about it. As science and technology, especially nano technology, moves from the lab into the garage it can and will be used by both good, moral people as well as people more … shall we say, driven by personal needs over the needs of civilization. ‘Moral’ means “having to do with or affecting other people. The results will have benefit and sometimes they will have more worrisome aspects.
I was stuck by a recent article in the magazine ‘O” (Opra) by the mother of one of the Colindale school shooters. She seems like a decent person, an ordinary mother, who suddenly had her world torn apart by her son and she had no clue it was coming. Her feelings of guilt will be with her for the rest of her life. The point is that we can’t predict what an individual will do even if we think we know them. So how do we keep intelligent, but mentally disturbed individuals from working out their issues using the power that comes from very powerful technology?
I hope to have a replicator on my desk someday, but how do any of us live in a community with a crazy man or woman who also has a replcator and the time to build dangerous things?
I read a science fiction book recently and one aspect of the fictional world was an alternative society that had no crime because they had an “alibi recorder” for each individual in the society. They each had a small device embedded in their body that sent data to a central data bank of everything they saw and did. No one watched the data, it was only recorded for use later if that person needed an alibi. I’ll try to find the book and give credit to the author.
I don’t think you could talk the human race into something like that. People are very private and secretive about so many things from how they make money to who they sleep with. But I think that anyone who has access to nano design software and hardware needs a 24 hour continuous alibi. If you don’t have that data connection, you don’t have access to any tool of nano design. Unmonitored people found with nano design tools will be shot on sight. Maybe I’m a bit too draconian here. The people who decide to be nano researchers, nano engineers and nano programmers should be required to create and maintain this sort of alibi.
In other words, anyone with access to the design tools for that technology makes their life available for scrutiny. They have privacy since no one can see the data without a court order. But they are known or can be known if there is a question.
My opinion is that society will never do such a thing until our pain is great enough to justify it. We shall see if intelligence wins out over animal emotion driven desire for privacy.