Support The Frightfully Hopeful Future of Technological Singularity Imagine. One day your Doctor regretfully informs you the person you love the most in your life is tragically going pass away due to an incurable disease. Instantly, overwhelming feelings of despair and anger burn inside your chest while graphic scenes of funeral details and goodbyes flood your mind eventually propelling you to the rhetorical question everyone asks, “Is there anything we can do?” Then, The Doctor hands you a pamphlet saying, “Have you ever heard of nanotechnology?” This Doctor is no “Mad Scientist”; in fact, he is a highly trained professional that has saved several lives with his proposition. What would you say? This small-scale scenario is the perplexing situation the human race will have to face in the near future. Although some would consider the merger of technology and human biology a completely “crack pot” idea, It is this hasty decision of judgment that explains our reaction to fear. This fear resonates with most of the population globally since it is this very generation that has witnessed the exponential growth of technology. Physically, psychologically and spiritually, technological singularity threatens our future and shakes the foundation of morality. However, does this change bring about negative or positive ramifications? With Technological Singularity’s future being so unpredictable, it would not be wise to ignore its possibilities especially since it was the human race,
In both of their articles they anticipate GNR technologies will make great leaps forward in future decades and will bring with them a myriad of new possibilities. Joy and Kurzweil both describe a not too distant future of robotics,artificial intelligence, and nanotechnology. They anticipate ubiquitous nanotechnology and artificial intelligence in only two to three decades time; furthermore, Joy and Kurzweil portray a world in which computers have far greater computing power because of advances in nanotechnology, nanobots can be easily produced at feasible cost, and artificial intelligence rivals, if not exceeds, that of the smartest humans. Based upon all of this research done and the rate at which current technologies are being improved upon, this matter is not very debatable. What is, however, is what the rapid advances made in the near future will present, and this is where Joy and Kurzweil begin to differ. They disagree on the topic of whether or not all the anticipated advances will be more of a benefit or hindrance to society and how these new technologies should be treated. Joy presents a pessimistic view in his essay, providing many reasons why developing GNR will endanger humans greatly. He describes a dystopian future where nanotechnology will be used to create pathogens that will be incredibly hard to stop and artificial intelligence will become independent and outgrow the need for humans. Joy compares GNR to the nuclear, biological, and chemical (NBC)
In his work, “Introduction: Nanotechnology, Society, and Ethics”, CalPoly Associate Professor of Philosophy Patrick Lin writes, “Let’s take a step back and consider any given technology we have created: gunpowder, the printing press, the camera, the automobile, nuclear power, the computer, Prozac, Viagra, the mobile phone, the Internet. Undoubtedly, these have brought us much good, but each has also changed society in important, fundamental ways and caused new problems, such as increased pollution, urban sprawl, cyber-crimes, privacy concerns, intellectual property concerns, drug dependencies, new cases of sexually-transmitted diseases, other unintended health problems, mutually-assured destruction and much more. The point here is not that we would have been better off without these inventions. Rather, we should come to terms that our creations can have unintended or unforeseen consequences” (Lin, n.d., p. 1). Lin’s point goes across the board for all technologies, there will be unforeseen consequences, some will be good and some will certainly be perceived as bad.
With the development of society, people's values are changing quite a lot. People tend to focus more time and energy on pursuing economic benefits and material satisfaction while ignoring the importance of morality. Here, my point is that no matter what technology we develop, no matter how much contribution and improvement this technology will bring to people. When we develop this technology, we have to obey ethical and moral rules. For instance, in “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks”, Rebecca Skloot recounts that doctors and scientists
Technology can be amazing if used in the right way and not used to harm people. The genome project leaves endless results of what is achievable through technology. Could someday, someone build an entire human from xenotransplantation. Could someday, there be a drug where you will never die anymore. The life expectancy from the last one hundred has already risen fifty percent to seventy-five years due to medicine. Who says this can’t keep growing now that it’s almost possible to have a xenotransplantation where you could get a “brand new heart or lungs that were grown in a pig.” Also, the fact that we can now predict what disease a baby is going to or can have by ten weeks after they are conceived, makes me wonder are we ever going to have worry about getting a surprise new health condition in our life.
1989, the year Marty McFly went Back to the Future to 2015 and gave us a glimpse of what technology held for us. Well, here we are in 2015 and some predictions were right, others not so much. With these new technologies came consequences, consequences that even Doc Brown could not predict. Technological advances have obvious benefits, for example better security devices to keep people safe or medical advances that prolong lives and combat illness; however, these technologies can also have what is referred to as unintended consequences, those less obvious outcomes that cannot be seen during the initial onset of a technological advance such as creating power struggles and unduly influencing society. It is those consequences that appear after
There have been inventions that have given hope and inspiration to others. Everyone values medicine and the technology that we currently have. But how far is too far? Medical technology is very economically risky and those that can’t afford it may struggle. Do you think this technology should be open to anyone, whether they are rich or poor? “We have shown through research that providing additional support to vulnerable patients and to their physicians, to provide education, support, and address the unique barriers they face, we can provide all patients the best care and best hope for a cure.” (Freund, 2015). Karen Freund is also one of the research professors that has a lot of experience as well as her interest in
BZRK, a novel by Michael Grant, is a science fiction story, about the misuse of nanotechnology. In the novel BZRK, nanotechnology is used for negative reasons, by the Armstrong Fancy Gift Corporation. This is an analogy of a world with nanotechnology in a modern day era. The technology developed the ability to make microscopic robots that can enter the human body through natural openings to change structures at a molecular level. They created it for medical purposes, for example, “to send his tiny minions in to kill cancer cells” (Grant, 72). Nanotechnology is being negatively used to take away freedom and chose for human beings. This good technology is used the wrong way to control the human mind and commit murder. Many of people with access
In my book, “The Invisible Man” by H.G. Wells, a man by the name of Griffin is doing an experiment and accidentally turns himself invisible. Although being invisible can be fun it comes with some downfalls like; getting away crimes, doing something bad and having guilt, terrorizing certain people or people in general, and misusing the power. This book has many different views, like how biomedical advancements can affect people and society, and how can affect the readers way of viewing the book and outcome. Biomedical Advancement is dangerous to both society and individuals, this is my biomedical theme for “The Invisible Man”. The author uses different theories to show you how this fits into place, like some important statements being said
Envision a world where nano sized robots can burrow themselves into your skin just by touching something or perhaps explode within you on command. Consider perchance, a world were humans have collective thoughts and can generate the processing power of a super computer. Sounds like something out of an awesome dream or a nightmare, depending on how you perceive it. These are just some of the ideas that are presented in transhumanism. Transhumanism can be explained as the belief that the human race can advance past its current physical and intellectual confines through the use of technology (Bostrom, 2014). In the current world we live in, we are limited by a number of factors, many of these include the scientific limitations and the properties of physics. On the other side of the limitations, lay the concepts of morality and ethical issues. Along with those concepts include how this technology correlates to our current world. In the novel The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson, humans live alongside nanobots (and various other technology) in a transhumanist world. In this advanced world, the ideas of morality and ethics are still present within the human race. In many aspects, the morality and ethical issues that humans encounter today are reencountered in this transhuman world.
Some technologies are useful, useless and some have toxic second natures. Technological advances help us live longer and make things more efficient. The medical field increase out
While many people are focused on the present, living in the moment, and doing what’s best for them right now, it is important to think about the influence it has on others. The scientific and technological advances made now will have a great effect on how lives are lived in the
Of the $700 million in funding that the National Nanotechnology Institute (NNI) received in 2003, less than $500,000 was spent on the study of how Nanotechnology could affect the environment. But typical to today’s culture the immediate payback doesn’t come from risk studies, as it does from how we can potentially cure diseases. When in the long run a little robot just might be able to cause a disease. Just as much as the public wants to know the risks the scientists working on the project have even more to lose from a fear of the unknown (Colvin).
Many scientists are in opposition to the use and prosperity of Nanorobots. They think that Nanorobots in future will surpass humans. Dystopian vision “a wretched, hard-scrabble existence under cruel oppression” is also supported by some people. This technology will lead to “an accumulation of great power and, concomitantly, great danger”, with the knowledge behind the technologies available for abuse, specifically by “individuals or small groups”. Nanorobot will become intelligent, demolish every thing in their way, and we can’t control them. So and so, there are some people to place this opinion. Since many objections to the feasibility of nanotechnology have still been
Indeed, mankind’s blind faith in technology will bring threat to the lives of people in terms of different aspects. The basic survival skills of human nature would gradually be lost, threatening our survival ability. Furthermore, it puts our lives at stake as our health will be at risk. Moreover, our level of vigilance decreases which places us in a dangerous situation. Others may point out that the technology we use most of the time is only for simple data input which does not threaten human life. However, technology is highly accessible and we cannot control the way of technological usage. Considering the aforementioned complexities, it is evident that ‘Mankind’s blind faith in technology will be our
Another idea presented in this week's readings which I found compelling was the brief discussions on technology and the impact this has on our sense of morality. Merton obviously speaks about technology to great lengths in his poem about the atomic bomb. In this piece Merton seems to take the position that technological advances are not always a good thing. In many ways, I would agree with Merton, especially when it comes to technological advances in weaponry. I believe, as I think Merton does as well, that many of these advances allow us as a species to dehumanize various groups and therefore enable us to destroy them with little conscious thought to the moral implications this destruction has. On the other hand, Haidt takes a different approach at the end of his article, "The New Synthesis in Moral Psychology." He states that with technological advances we become more aware of people in the rest of the world, not only aware of their achievements but also of their tragedies. As this happens, our concern for others expands "and we increasingly want peace, decency, and cooperation to prevail in other groups, and in the human group as well." (Haidt, pg. 1001) I found this statement particularly interesting because, like many others, I often assume that rather than uniting us as a human species, technology often isolates us and we become more disconnected from our immediate groups as well as our wider groups. I often,