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WIRED MAGAZINE: 16.04
15th Anniversary: Why the Future Still Needs Us a
While Longer
By Lucas Graves 03.24.08 | 6:00 PM

START Eight years ago this month, Internet pioneer Bill Joy led us on a
PREVIOUS: Need to Slice Through a
hair-raising intellectual trip from Kurzweil to Kaczynski that left the
Boulder? Try a 10,000-Degree Tactical lifelong technologist terrified of tomorrow. His cover story ("Why the
Cutter Future Doesn't Need Us") pointed to three fast-changing technologies —
NEXT: 15th Anniversary: Do You Speak genetics, nanotech, and robotics — whose potential for uncontrolled
Meme? Match the Buzz Phrase With Its self-replication poses a new kind of threat to our survival. It's time for an
Definition update on our undoing.
15 YEARS OF WIRED: A Look Back Genetics
WIRED ISSUE 8.04: Why the Future Joy's greatest fear was the white plague: a disease engineered to target
Doesn't Need Us 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

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15th Anniversary: Why the Future Still Needs Us a While Longer http://www.wired.com/print/techbiz/media/magazine/16-04/st_15joy

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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