h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I have read "The Abolition of Man" by C S Lewis, and consider that excessive technological advance could be very dangerous. It arises out of man's desire to control his environment, but if man can create anything with greater intellectual power than himself, the opposite will occur and man will no longer dominate the Earth. There comes a time when technological advance becomes "playing God" and I believe that this too could be catastrophic for mankind. There is something sinister about the way humans are discovering how God created the code for human life, and then considering themselves in a position to tamper with that.

Any thoughts on this, anyone?

This assumes that there is a god in the first place - a subject that is hotly debated elsewhere on h2g2

Discoveries of this kind continue apace and so far we have survived. For example we were much closer to Mutually Assured Distruction (MAD) at the time of he Cuban missile crisis in the early 1960s than we are now!

Science itself is not evil. Capitalist exploitation of science has the potential to be so unintentionally but the biggest problem facing us today is fundamentalism that rejects science and totalitarianism (and I include Western democacies in this category) that uses scietific discovery to suit its' own ends.

turvy (thank you and good night)

Well for me I think there is a kind-of inevitability about the singularity, evolution and the playing of, a so called god by humans.

Once an entity reaches sentience I believe there to be a never a kind of trigger event that releases a never-ending desire to discover -why?- such sentience was achieved in the first place.

And with that comes the inevitable race of tools/technologies/sciences.

A never ending process of life - sentience - creation of life - sentience - creation of life - which leads to very fundamental changes in the way each entity at each stage experiences that life.

That is probably just my warped understanding of what the -Singularity- is, and will be, but when all is said and done, I may be totally and utterly wrong; but nobody can deny the fact that, as humans we will continue to create technologies and explore our environment and self through the sciences because we wish for understanding.

Its a thirst that drives us mentally to ask such questions, and then seek the answers to them, during the periods when our brains or consciousness are not getting on with the many mundane things of everyday life, food/breeding/rest etc

"Is it dangerous?" you ask, well there is certainly allot of risk involved with the technologies we are exploring, biotech, nanotech etc these technologies could take us down very dark paths in our evolutionary history; but then there always is an element of risk with each breakthrough in our evoltion of technological knowledge; splitting the atom was dangerous, writing the word was considered dangerous, mathematics was considered dangerous, fire etc, you see?

I think those being born in this new century 2000+ are very lucky people indeed, myself I can only hope beyond hope that I will witness and take a part in the singularity for death is somethign a fear greatly as an uknown.

Nanotechnology is progressing fast now, and I would put a comparison with nanotech to the evolution of the CPU and Memory speeds, it is gaining ground and power and scope at an ever faster rate, and with each breakthrough the scope for more breakthroughs widens, and each widening leads many more avenues of reasearch.

R&D in nanotech now, is at the stage were scientists are actually storing data in qubit form and using nano components to create nano circuits, storing binary information in light etc

We are very much on the horizon of the singularity I think

Lets hope we are alive to witness it eh

Good luck everyone

S-S