Back to the Future: Engineering, Computing, and Ethics

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A few years ago, Bill Joy, a cofounder of Sun Microsystems and coauthor of the Java software specification, published a controversial article in Wired magazine in which he suggested that certain paths of scientific and technological research - genetic engineering, robotics, and nanotechnology - posed such great dangers to the future of the human beings that we ought to think twice before proceeding down those paths. Joy believes that what distinguishes these technologies from earlier ones is their potential for self-replication, thus raising the specter of a "future [that] doesn't need us." However, not all technologists share Joy's concern. For example, in a panel discussion of "humanoid …