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Persuasive Essay On Modern Technology

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Technology, quite obviously, is all around us. That was exemplified by the research of Michigan-born computer scientist, Bill Joy. In 1982, he co-founded Sun Microsystems and was the chief scientist until 2003. He is the author of the world-renowned article, Why the Future Doesn’t Need Us. This article articulates Joy’s worries over the development of modern technologies. This essay speaks of genetic engineering, nanotechnology, and robotics (GNR), which are threatening to make humans an endangered species. 21st-century technologies, honestly, are dangerous. They should not be used to overpower the human populace. Joy had just begun to realize this in 1998, after a discussion with Ray Kurzweil, “the deservedly famous inventor of the first reading machine for the blind and many other amazing things”. Along with the Berkeley philosopher, John Searle, who studies consciousness, Kurzweil told the two about how the rate of improvement of technology would increase, and thus, sentient robots were in the realm of possibility. After reading an early draft of Kurzweil’s book, The Age of Spiritual Machines: When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence, Joy’s unease accelerated.
There is a passage in the book by the Unabomber, Ted Kaczynski. Joy did not agree with the seventeen-year murderous rampage that the man went on, as one of his bombs had gravely injured one of Joy’s friends, David Gelernter, who is a brilliant computer scientist. Although Joy was afraid for his life during

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