Radical Evolution: The Promise and Peril of Enhancing Our Minds, Our Bodies -- and What It Means to Be Human

by Joel Garreau

  “bit by bit we’ll rebuild ourselves”: Brockman, “Consciousness Is a Big Suitcase: A Talk with Marvin Minsky.”

  comparable to “only two earlier inventions”: Marvin Minsky, “Foreword,” in K. Eric Drexler, Engines of Creation (Garden City, NY: Anchor, 1986). ISBN: 0-385-19973-2, page vii.

  “of beings whose making we’ll supervise”: Marvin Minsky, “What Comes After Minds?” in John Brockman, ed., The New Humanists: Science at the Edge (New York: Barnes and Noble Books, 2003). ISBN: 0760745293, pages 198–199.

  Japanese Aibo owners have a more emotional relationship: Tony McNicol, “The Rise of the Machines: Japan’s Leading the Robotics Charge, But to Where,” Japan Times, November 25, 2003. http://www.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/getarticle.pl5?fl20031125zg.htm

  Whack it on the nose: G. Jeffrey MacDonald, “If You Kick a Robotic Dog, Is It Wrong?” Christian Science Monitor, February 5, 2004. I love this question. http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0205/p18s01-stct.html

  More than half the owners of these robots give them names: Erik Baard, “Cyborg Liberation Front: Inside the Movement for Posthuman Rights,” Village Voice, July 30, 2003. http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0331/baard.php

  In 1988 this pioneer published: Hans Moravec, Mind Children: The Future of Robot and Human Intelligence (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1988). ISBN: 0-674-57618-7 (paper).

  He meant the intelligent children: Hans Moravec, Robot: Mere Machine to Transcendent Mind (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999). ISBN: 0-19-513630-6 (paper). page viii.

  the first time in history somebody tried to surrender to a robot: Richard A. Muller, “Weapons of Precise Destruction,” Technology Review, May 10, 2002. http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/print_version/wo_muller051002.asp

  the size of sparrows: 15 cm. long.

  such as the Black Widow: “UAV Forum: Black Widow.” http://www.uavforum.com/vehicles/developmental/blackwidow.htm

  The dog would be there to bite the pilot: “Future of Flight: High Times,” The Economist, December 13, 2003, page 79. http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=2282185

  “a robot out of Jello”: John Brockman, “Beyond Computation: A Talk With Rodney Brooks,” Edge: The Third Culture. http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/brooks_beyond/beyond_index.html

  “just because Bill Joy was afraid of them”: Ibid.

  These are emergency and military robots: iRobot home page: http://www.irobot.com

  DARPA loves the experimental versions: See especially the work of Robert S. Full of the Poly-PEDAL Lab at Berkeley. http://polypedal.berkeley.edu

  As a result “we will become a merger between flesh and machines”: Rodney A. Brooks, Flesh and Machines: How Robots Will Change Us (New York: Pantheon Books, 2002). ISBN: 0-375-42079-7, page x.

  Chapter Five HELL

  “Technological progress is like an axe”: This is the pithiest and most widely quoted version of Einstein’s aphorism. It is also rendered as “Our entire much-praised technological progress, and civilization generally, could be compared to an axe in the hand of a pathological criminal” in Albert Folsing, Albert Einstein: A Biography (New York: Viking Press, 1997). ISBN: 0670855456.

  “Human nature will be the last”: C. S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996). ISBN: 0-8054-2047-9, pages 69–70.

  To snag the end of the runway: I am indebted to Jim Elwood, director of aviation, Aspen–Pitkin County Airport, for this calculation.

  From 1877 to 1893: Malcolm Rohrbough, Aspen: The History of a Silver Mining Town 1879–1893 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986). ISBN: 0-19-564064-3. Also Frank L. Wentworth, Aspen on the Roaring Fork (Denver: Sundance Publications, 1976). ISBN: 1112829911 (earlier editions exist). See also, “Aspen, Colorado,” Wikipedia. http://en2.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aspen,_Colorado

  Joy is in Aspen because: Joy interview, May 5–6, 2003.

  whistle up for him a Citation X: Joy interview, February 6, 2004.

  the world’s fastest private jet: “Citation X.” http://citationx.cessna.com/home.chtml

  He settled on Aspen, population 5,914: U.S. Census, year 2000.

  He was the commencement speaker: Joy interview, May 5–6, 2003.

  Some houses run to 40,000 square feet: Joy interview, February 6, 2004.

  To get to the Internet, he fires up a satellite dish: Joy interview, May 5–6, 2003.

  no man is an island: John Donne. “Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions: Meditation XVII, No Man Is an Island.”

  “We’re both from Michigan”: See, for example, Gerald Beals: “Biography of Thomas Alva Edison,” Thomasedison.com. http://www.thomasedison.com/biog.htm

  “It was fun”: Joy interview, May 5–6, 2003.

  In 1982, Joy married that system: Joy interview, February 6, 2004.

  In it, intelligence would be embedded: Joy launched this ecosystem with the concept known as “peer-to-peer,” an advanced form of distributed computing. In it, the instructions that allowed the sharing were kept small and simple. Any device could quickly and efficiently turn to any other. To accomplish this, Joy invented computer languages and networking technologies and protocols that he called Java, Jini, and JXTA (as in juxtaposition) and offered them to the world for free.

  In 1988 this crystallized: “The Other Bill,” The Economist, Technology Quarterly, September 19, 2002, page 25. http://www.economist.com/PrinterFriendly.cfm?Story_ID=1324644

  He intended his warning to be reminiscent of Albert Einstein’s: Joel Garreau, “From Internet Scientist, a Preview of Extinction,” Washington Post, March 12, 2000, page A15. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2000/03/13/MN108057.DTL&type=printable

  In a vast, 24-page spread: Bill Joy, “Why the Future Doesn’t Need Us,” Wired, April 2000. http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/8.04/joy_pr.html

  “gray goo” end-of-the-world scenario: K. Eric Drexler, Engines of Creation: The Coming Era of Nanotechnology (New York: Anchor, 1986). ISBN: 0-385-19973-2, pages 172–175. Drexler has backed off considerably on the gray goo scenario since first offering it, arguing that it would be much more simple and efficient to create assemblers that can’t autonomously self-replicate than to create ones that can. He also believes there are much bigger things to worry about, such as using nano to create a new arms race, as was actually advocated by the president of India. See, for example: Chris Phoenix and Eric Drexler, “Safe Exponential Manufacturing,” Nanotechnology 15:8, August 2004, pages 869–872. http://www.iop.org/EJ/abstract/0957-4484/ 15/8/001/

  “Gray goo would surely be”: In his Wired piece, Joy inserts the following footnote here: “In his 1963 novel Cat’s Cradle, Kurt Vonnegut imagined a gray-goo-like accident where a form of ice called ice-nine, which becomes solid at a much higher temperature, freezes the oceans.”

  His dad, William: Joy interview, May 5–6, 2003.

  By the time he was 3: Joy. “Why the Future Doesn’t Need Us.”

  He believes they are unprepared: Joy interview, May 5–6, 2003.

  As the right of each sentient species: “Prime Directive,” http://www.70disco.com/startrek/primedir.htm

  At the age of 16, in 1971: Joy interview, May 5–6, 2003.

  “breaking the marble spell”: In discussing this in “Why the Future Doesn’t Need Us,” Joy inserts the following footnote:

  Michelangelo wrote a sonnet that begins:

  Non ha l’ ottimo artista alcun concetto

  Ch’ un marmo solo in sè non circonscriva

  Col suo soverchio; e solo a quello arriva

  La man che ubbidisce all’ intelleto.

  Stone translates this as:

  The best of artists hath no thought to show

  which the rough stone in its superfluous shell

  doth not include; to break the marble spell

  is all the hand that serves the brain can do.

  Stone describes the process: “He was not working from his drawings or clay models; they had all been put away. He was carving from th
e images in his mind. His eyes and hands knew where every line, curve, mass must emerge, and at what depth in the heart of the stone to create the low relief.” The Agony and the Ecstasy (New York: Doubleday, 1961), page 144.

  The turning point for Joy came on September 17, 1998: Date from Kurzweil’s records.

  Financiers with what seemed: Gary Rivlin, “The Madness of King George: George Gilder listened to the technology, and became guru of the telecosm. The markets listened to his newsletter, and followed him into the Global Crossing abyss. Yet he’s never stopped believing,” Wired, July 2002. http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/10.07/gilder_pr.html

  He discovered he was reading: Theodore Kaczynski, The Unabomber Manifesto: Industrial Society & Its Future (Jolly Roger Press, 1995). ASIN: 0963420526. The history of the original publication of this work is summarized by Court TV Online at http://www.courttv.com/trials/unabomber/manifesto:

  The document that would come to be known as the Unabomber’s manifesto was first mentioned in a letter to The New York Times editor Warren Hoge. This April 24, 1995 letter proposed a “bargain”: if the Times would publish a lengthy article, penned by the letter’s author—then known only as a representative of “FC,” a presumed acronym for a terrorist group—“FC” would end a terrorist campaign which, the letter claimed, included several of the attacks attributed to the Una-bomber. That letter was followed a little over a month later by a copy of the 65-page manuscript described in the April letter. The attached letter to Hoge laid out additional terms for publication.

  Michael Getler of The Washington Post received a similar letter on June 24, 1995, along with a copy of the manuscript. The same day, Bob Guccione of Penthouse magazine received a letter, responding to an earlier offer to publish the work in his magazine. The author—“FC”—indicated he would rather publish the work in a more “respectable” publication.

  Almost three months later on September 19, the Times and the Post split costs on a special section of the Post that reprinted the manifesto in full. It was that special publication that led David Kaczynski to draw a comparison between the Una-bomber and his estranged brother Ted.

  He was a speaker: First Foresight Conference on Nanotechnology in October 1989, a talk titled “The Future of Computation.” Published in B. C. Crandall and James Lewis, eds., Nanotechnology: Research and Perspectives (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1992), page 269. See also www.foresight.org/Conferences/MNT01/Nano1.html

  “would some of them go off”: Joy interview, May 5–6, 2003.

  “extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof”: The quote is by the late astronomer Carl Sagan, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and believer in the possibility of extraterrestrial life and intelligence.

  Such an artificial life form: Barton Gellman, “Iraq’s Arsenal Was Only on Paper: Since Gulf War, Nonconventional Weapons Never Got Past the Planning Stage,” Washington Post, January 7, 2004, page A1. http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A60340-2004Jan6?language=printer

  flesh-eating . . . nanobots: Sheldon Pacotti, “Are We Doomed Yet?: The computer-networked, digital world poses enormous threats to humanity that no government, no matter how totalitarian, can stop. A fully open society is our best chance for survival,” Salon.com, March 31, 2003. http://salon.com/tech/feature/2003/03/31/knowledge/print.html

  Cowpox virus also has been genetically altered: Debora MacKenzie, “US Develops Lethal New Viruses,” New Scientist, October 20, 2003. http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99994318

  “At first, they’d bear about”: Lucretius (Titus Lucretius Carus), Of the Nature of Things, Book VI: The Plague of Athens, trans. William Ellery Leonard, University of Adelaide Library. http://etext.library.adelaide.edu.au/l/l94o/chap32.html

  mass starvation by 1975: Paul Ehrlich, Population Bomb (New York: Random House, 2000). ASIN: 0871560194.

  theories of collapse: Arthur Herman, The Idea of Decline in Western History (New York: The Free Press, 1997). ISBN: 0-684-82791-3, page 13.

  “Accursed be the soil because of you”: Jerusalem Bible, Genesis 3:17–19.

  In Greek myth, Pandora: Roy Willis, gen. ed., World Mythology (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1993). ISBN: 0-8050-4913-4 (paper).

  The Hindus, too, have a saga: Herman, The Idea of Decline, page 14.

  “To whom can I speak today?”: H. Frankfort, Ancient Egyptian Religion (New York: Columbia University Press, 1948), page 143. Cited in Herman, The Idea of Decline, page 14.

  When she spurned his advances: “Cassandra in Greek Mythology,” Mythography. http://www.loggia.com/myth/cassandra.html

  To “make a name for ourselves”: Jerusalem Bible (Garden City, NY: Doubleday), Genesis 11:4.

  “This is but the start of their undertakings”: Jerusalem Bible, Genesis 11:6.

  hard to argue against rationality: Herman, The Idea of Decline, page 22.

  The idea of progress was inseparable: François Guizot, Historical Essays and Lectures, Stanley Mellon, ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1972), cited in Herman, The Idea of Decline, page 25.

  “Dependency, especially on political”: Herman, The Idea of Decline, page 24.

  The perfection of human reason seemed to equal transcendence: Ibid., page 26.

  [Bacon] describes a society: See, for example, the explanation of why the editors of The New Atlantis: A Journal of Technology and Society named it after his work. http:// www.thenewatlantis.com/about/

  They have no illusions: Eric Cohen, “Biotech Loses Its Innocence: War and Peace in the Brave New World,” The Weekly Standard, June 24, 2002. http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/001/369zqxvp.asp

  “Virtue and truth produced strength”: Herman, The Idea of Decline, page 27.

  Malthus, by the way: Ibid., page 28.

  In 1808, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: Alfred Bates, ed., The Drama: Its History, Literature and Influence on Civilization (London: Historical Publishing Company, 1906), vol. 11, pages 5–7. Reprinted in “The Faust Legend,” TheatreHistory.com. http://www.theatrehistory.com/german/goethe003.html

  a sensational leap of imagination: Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Frankenstein (London: Henry Colburn and Richard Bentley, 1851), page vii.

  “It was on a dreary night”: Ibid., page 43.

  “When I placed my head”: From the introduction to the 1831 edition, pages x–xi. See Electronic Text Center, University of Virginia Library. http://etext.us.virginia.edu/

  “principles of human nature”: Ibid., Preface, page 1.

  In 1932, Aldous Huxley addressed: Aldous Huxley, Brave New World and Brave New World Revisited (New York: Perennial, 1942). ISBN: 0060901012.

  contentment is more important than freedom or truth: Jack Coulehan, “Literary Annotations: Huxley, Aldous, Brave New World,” New York University Literature, Arts, and Medicine Database, January 1998. http://endeavor.med.nyu.edu/lit-med/lit-med-db/webdocs/webdescrips/huxley1256-des-.html

  Orwellian has become the gold standard adjective: Glenn Frankel, “A Seer’s Blind Spots: On George Orwell’s 100th, a Look at a Flawed and Fascinating Writer,” Washington Post, June 25, 2003, page C1.

  Human behavior was just the sum total of the effect of external forces: “People and Discoveries: B. F. Skinner,” Public Broadcasting System. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aso/databank/entries/bhskin.html