REACTION PAPER: Why The Future Doesn’t Need Us

Bill Joy’s Why the Future Doesn’t Need Us (Wired, April 1, 2000) is an article
published in the website Wired that talks about our most powerful 21st century
technologies - robotics, genetic engineering, and nanotech - and how they are
threatening to make humans an endangered species. Bill Joy explains the dangers
of this fast progressing development of technology and its capability as well as the
possibility to replace humans in the future. From his elementary days up to the
present timeline, he talks about his encounters with people involved in science and
scientific research, also mentioning about the books he read, giving hard based
evidence to support his claims. Basically, this article was made to warn humans
about our actions that could lead to our inexistence. “Knowledge is good… Can we
doubt that knowledge has become a weapon we wield against ourselves?” a strong
line left by Bill Joy to help us realize that technology brought by our intelligence is a
double edged sword that we use in our lives but may someday turn against us. Not
as a permanent solution, but to alleviate somehow the fear and slow down the
progress, we could slowly stop the future without humans by finding alternatives to
weapons, steering clear from dangers and to participate in the discussions issued in
his writings for our own sake.

I believe that Bill Joy stated facts and possibilities in his article. He mentioned
that we have become too reliant on machines, we have become accustomed to this
life of leisure that through our wits, we produce robots that could work and produce
outcomes more efficiently than humans. I also fear that the day will come where
robots built by our species would surpass our capabilities as humans. In times like
today, we only have artificial intelligence technology, but the day where robots who
could make decisions, who could think for us, exist, would be the day that we will not
be needed anymore. And since man can’t live without nature, but nature can live
without man, poses even the greater threat that in a few years, a century, or an
indefinite time from now, the world would exist only with nature and robots as its new
species.

When Bill Joy said that the future doesn’t need us, he meant that mother
nature would be fine without us. Seeing that technology is developing, we humans
also evolve, but we often forget about other living organisms. They also possess the
capability to adapt from the dangers we humans possess in order to avoid extinction
hence when DDT, a chemical compound developed as an insecticide, was produced
to repel mosquitoes, they developed DDT resistance. When multi-drugs were
induced by mass to counter malaria, they developed multi-drug-resistant genes. And
with people’s misuse of antibiotics, bacteria are now also developing resistance to
this drug, which is very alarming because this could have an adverse effect in the
future.
 Failing to understand the consequences of our inventions while we are in the
rapture of discovery and innovation seems to be a common fault of scientists and
technologists, he said, but I don’t think it is inclusive only of our inventors. We
humans should be aware and responsible of our actions and its consequences. The
bombing of Nagasaki and Hirsohima was a historical event that people remember
because many people died and it led to mass destruction. It makes me question, are
our morals and ethics affected by this advancing technology? Is it really necessary
that in order to achieve power, we have to instill fear, we have to destroy, we have to
misuse weapons? Was that really the main purpose for technological advancement?
Not for the good, but to attain power for those in the lesser population of the
hierarchical pyramid? It fears me that our future would have to depend on the elites.
It’s frightening just thinking of the possibility that in the process of developing, in the
process of progress for a highly advanced society, we would lose one thing that
robots don’t have- emotions, that robots may not surpass us, but we would be our
own enemy.

In conclusion, I agree to most of the ideas of Bill Joy in his article and would
recommend this to people who care enough to read about the possibilities of our
future.