Eight years ago this month, Internet pioneer Bill Joy led us on a hair-raising intellectual trip from Kurzweil to Kaczynski that left the lifelong technologist terrified of tomorrow. His cover story ("Why the Future Doesn't Need Us") pointed to three fast-changing technologies — genetics, nanotech, and robotics — whose potential for uncontrolled self-replication poses a new kind of threat to our survival. It's time for an update on our undoing.
Genetics
Joy's greatest fear was the white plague: a disease engineered to target one race or ethnic group — or all females, as in the Frank Herbert novel ... The White Plague. Molecular biologist Lee Silver says that while in theory it would be possible to attack males via the Y-chromosome, it now seems we share too much DNA for all women or any one race to be at risk.
Nanotech
The essay cites the "gray goo" scenario, the fear that out-of-control nanobots will start turning something essential — say, air — into copies of themselves. In practice, scientists still haven't figured out how to get artificial nanostructures to self-clone. The most promising work is modeled on DNA, but the process still requires human help — for now.
Robotics
Once smart machines can build other smart machines, they won't need humans — and might race us for key resources or even take up arms, Terminator-style. Joy expected intelligent robots by 2030, and scientists agree, predicting major breakthroughs in AI over the next 20 years. But it's too early to say whether we'll be calling Sarah Connor.
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