When Clarke said that, by “sufficiently advanced technology,” he had in mind the fruits of cultures thousands of years beyond our own.
But scientific progress increases exponentially. Ninety percent of all the advances made in the millennium we’re now leaving happened in its final ten percent—the final century. Antibiotics and organ transplants, space travel and radio telescopes, computers and lasers, television and motion pictures, civil rights and feminism—all of them are the product of the 20th century.
Within the next two decades, we’ll see as much additional progress as we did in all of the last century: the world of A.D. 2020 will be as incomprehensible to us as our world of today would have been to Queen Victoria during the last year of her reign.
We can guess at some of what the next couple of decades will bring, but it very quickly transcends beyond the realm of what we know as science into Arthur C. Clarke’s magic.
Consider nanotechnology, which is probably just around the corner. It will allow us to build things up atom by atom. You want a five-course dinner? A brick of platinum? A new kidney? Claudia Schiffer? No problem. We can build it for you.
At the most advanced levels, nanotechnology will tear down and build up atoms from constituent parts: the differences between a pile of old newspapers and gold-and-diamond jewelry are only in how the protons, neutrons, and electrons are arranged. Sophisticated nanotech gives you the alchemist’s dream of transmutation; it gives everyone the Midas touch—and it means there is no longer any such thing as a scarce resource. Food, fuel, drinking water, clean air—whatever you want, in whatever quantity you want it, all free for the asking.
More: since nanotechnological machines will be able to make anything—including unlimited copies of themselves—the devices that perform this magic become essentially free of cost. Material needs disappear. Bill Gates won’t be the richest person in the world two decades from now; rather, everyone will have unlimited wealth.
But having all your material needs taken care of does you no good if you’re dead. No problem: if you manage to hold on until A.D. 2020—another twenty years—it’s likely that you will never die.
We already know what causes cells to age and cease to function; reversing the process will be one of the countless benefits of the Human Genome Project, currently nearing completion. Almost everyone born on this planet after 1950 will live to see not just the twenty-first century, but the twenty-second, and perhaps the twenty-third as well.
Of course, even with aging halted, there’s still a risk of accident—of having your body destroyed. But that’s only a concern if we continue to have bodies. Certainly by the end of the next century, we will be able to dispense with these fallible sacks of flesh. We will have the technology to scan our brains and upload our consciousnesses into computers, living entirely in a virtual realm. At that point, we will be truly immortal.
We also will be quite different from what we were; we will have entered the trans-human era.
Granted, these notions—nanotechnology, life prolongation, uploaded consciousness—are the easy ones, the ones we can foresee, because they grow out of work already underway at our universities. But even science-fiction writers like myself failed to predict the World Wide Web, which has already transformed the planet. Life in the 21st century will be utterly unlike anything we can predict. It will be alien and strange, and during it, we will completely redefine what it means to be human. But it also will be wonderful and luxurious.
It will, in fact, be magic.
Is Risk Our Business?
In the April 2000 issue of Wired, Bill Joy, the chief scientist at Sun Microsystems, published his now-famous antitechnology manifesto, “Why The Future Doesn’t Need Us.” The Globe and Mail: Canada’s National Newspaper asked for my reaction; this piece appeared in the Thursday, March 16, 2000, edition.
Those who pooh-pooh William Shatner’s acting should see his soliloquy from the Star Trek episode “Return to Tomorrow.” Aliens offer the crew of the Enterprise fantastic advances in technology in exchange for letting them inhabit the bodies of three crew members for a few days.
Dr. McCoy, the Luddite, points out the downsides, but Captain Kirk wins him over with his eloquence: “Risk is our business,” he says after enumerating advances science has already made by throwing caution to the wind. “That’s what this starship is all about; that’s why we’re aboard her.”
Shatner is so terrific, actually, that one forgets that the owners of the three borrowed bodies almost end up killed, one of the aliens commits murder, two die by suicide, and no scientific wonders are ever bestowed.
Despite this, we’re left thinking that Kirk was nonetheless right to push for the advancement of science, the risks be damned. Anything less would be a betrayal of the human spirit.
These days, we don’t have to look to aliens to provide technologies indistinguishable from magic. Such powers are now within our own grasp, apples of new knowledge seemingly ripe for the plucking. But was Kirk right? Is taking risks for the mere possibility of advancement worth it?
Bill Joy confesses to have grown up watching Captain Kirk and reading science fiction. And, like many who did so, Joy has gone on to a technological career. He is chief scientist at Sun Microsystems, a giant Silicon Valley firm.
This week, in Wired magazine, he published an 11,000-word manifesto that, distilled to its essence, repeats the mantra of much 1950s science fiction: “There are some things Man was not meant to know.”
Joy is worried about three nascent technologies: artificial intelligence (AI), genetic engineering, and nanotechnology. Is he right to be afraid of them? And, even if he is, is there anything we can do to reduce the risks?
Joy’s concern about AI is simple: if we make machines that are more intelligent than we are, why on earth would they want to be our slaves?
In this, I believe he is absolutely right: thinking computers pose a real threat to the continued survival of our species. Many AI experts—including Hans Moravec, founder of the world’s largest robotics lab, at Carnegie Mellon University—believe that humanity’s job is to manufacture its own successors.
Sure, Moravec says, we may shed a tear for some ineffable biological qualities that might be lost, but in the end Homo sapiens will be supplanted by machines. Since that’s inevitable, he feels, we might as well go along doing the research that will lead to this.
Joy says no: we can, and perhaps should, put on the brakes. I agree.
Intelligence is an emergent property of complex systems; it arises spontaneously if conditions are right. Anatomically modern humans first appeared 100,000 years ago, but they were unencumbered by art, culture, religion, or abstract thought for 60,000 years.
Then, with no physical change in their brains, consciousness emerged. Suddenly, these same people were painting caves, developing religious rituals, and more.
The emergence of computer-based consciousness may happen the same way: arising spontaneously out of something complex we built, perhaps for another purpose (World Wide Web, anyone?).
It’s not a new idea; Arthur C. Clarke first put it forward almost forty years ago in his story “Dial F for Frankenstein.”
Other science-fiction authors have sounded this warning bell. William Gibson’s 1984 novel Neuromancer features an organization called Turing whose job is to prevent the emergence of AI. And in my own 1998 Factoring Humanity, a thinking computer created at the University of Toronto commits suicide rather than risk turning against its human father.
I’m less concerned, though, about Joy’s other two bugbears: genetic engineering and nanotechnology. Both, really, are forms of manipulation at the submolecular level: genetic engineering rearranges the atoms in a string of DNA so that a modified life-form is produced.
And nanotechnology simply takes that a step further, proposing that we soon will be able to tear down and rebuild any molecules we want, turning, for instance, a pile of bricks into a mound of gold, or a giant three-cheese lasagna, or any
thing else.
Joy’s fear is that genetic engineering will be used to create diseases that target specific ethnicities. An Arab and an Israeli don’t just differ politically; they differ genetically, too, and Joy fears it will soon be easy enough to produce a virus that will wipe out only one or the other.
Possible? Yes. But, then, so is a plague that affects only those humans with genes for antisocial behavior (first-order sorting: check for a Y chromosome); you can bet some self-styled Good Samaritan will release something like this, as well.
But, despite such scenarios, I find it unconscionable to tell a boy with leukemia or a woman with diabetes that we’re not going to do any more genetic research. The cures for diseases—including the one known as aging that gets us all if nothing else does—will come only from manipulating DNA.
Joy also thinks we should have a moratorium on nanotechnology, since a nanotech machine can produce anything—including copies of itself—from whatever raw materials are at hand.
He writes, “An immediate consequence of the Faustian bargain in obtaining the great power of nanotechnology is that we run a grave risk—the risk that we might destroy the biosphere on which all life depends.” Indeed, if just one little self-replicating doodad that turns water into wine escapes, we might see it and its spawn destroy our ecosystem, and us along with it.
But nanotechnology will also allow us to provide for all the material needs of the entire human race: as much clear air, water, food, clothing, shelter, medicine, and entertainment as anyone could ever want.
It will be impossible to keep this technology from the masses: just one microscopic machine that can convert raw materials into other forms is all that has to be smuggled out of the lab.
Soon, everyone will have a replicator, and the economic reasons for war, oppression, and figurative and literal slavery will disappear. Supply will always equal demand in everything from basic essentials to elaborate equipment, costs will be zero, and poverty will vanish.
Captain Kirk said, “Risk is our business.” I don’t think so; I think improving the human condition is our business. Other minds—silicon consciousnesses—won’t share that mission statement, and are rightly to be avoided. But genetic engineering and nanotechnology will allow us to so vastly improve humanity’s lot that we’d be fools to turn our backs on them—despite the risks.
The Private Sector in Space
In honor of the first private-sector manned spaceflight, which took place in the summer of 2004, The Globe and Mail: Canada’s National Newspaper commissioned me to write this op-ed piece; it first appeared in that paper’s Tuesday, June 29, 2004, edition.
Most TV viewers remember Andy Griffith as Sheriff Taylor of Mayberry, or as Ben Matlock, the wily defence attorney. Me, I remember him as Harry Broderick, the main character of the 1979 ABC science-fiction series Salvage 1.
Like Star Trek, another of my favorites, this show had narration over the opening credits: “Once upon a time, a junkman had a dream. ‘I’m gonna build a spaceship, go to the moon, salvage all the junk that’s up there, bring it back, and sell it.’”
As is so common with science fiction, the premise of Salvage 1 has now become science fact. The private sector has begun sending humans into space for motives of pure profit. And I, for one, think that’s great.
Last Monday, June 21, a vehicle bearing the wonderfully appropriate name SpaceShip One became the first-ever private space vessel, travelling 100 km above the Earth. At the helm was Mike Melvill, who, at the age of 63, is now the first private pilot to earn astronaut’s wings from the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration.
Melvill plans to go up again soon. He’s part of a team funded by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen that’s looking to snare the Ansari X Prize: US$10-million that will go to the first private-sector concern to launch a reusable vehicle containing three people into space twice in a two-week period. The prize is the brain-child of physician Peter Diamandis, who came up with the idea after reading about how the US$25,000 Orteig Prize had inspired Charles Lindbergh to undertake the world’s first solo transatlantic flight in 1927. Since the dawn of powered flight, making money has been a great motivator.
There are 23 other groups vying for the X Prize, including two in Canada: the Canuck spaceships are the Arrow (who says you never get second chances?) and the Wild Fire. Everybody involved in these projects is convinced that great benefits will come from the private sector being involved in manned space flight.
And why shouldn’t it be? The public sector—particularly NASA—has certainly botched it. The International Space Station had cost overruns that would make even a military contractor blush. And after the Columbia tragedy of February 2003—like the earlier Challenger disaster, largely attributable to administrative incompetence—what’s left of the U.S. space shuttle fleet has been grounded.
We’ve had 43 years of space travel based on a recipe of bureaucracy and big spending, and, astonishingly, in all that time, the cost of putting a person in space has remained constant. That’s because there’s been no competition to drive the price down. But the government monopoly on manned space flight is coming to an end as we try a new set of ingredients: guts and imagination, entrepreneurship and innovation.
And fun—let’s not forget fun! Indeed, that was always one of NASA’s problems. As science-fiction legend Robert A. Heinlein famously observed, only a government bureaucracy could succeed in making the grand adventure of going into space boring.
Fortunately, despite Mission Control’s snooze-inducing efforts, a large segment of the public is still captivated by the dream of travelling in space. And, indeed, the era of space tourism has already begun: in 2001, Dennis Tito became the first person to buy a vacation above Earth, heading up on a Russian cargo rocket to the International Space Station.
What’s the appeal? Well, besides the thrill of the ride and the breathtaking views of our own planet, journeys to space also allow you to experience weightlessness. In zero gravity, everyone’s an acrobat.
The market is huge. Surveys show that 69% of males and 57% of females want to take a trip into space—and 70% of those would be willing to pay several months’ salary to do so. Patrick Collins of Space Future Consulting predicts that by 2030, the private sector will be putting five million tourists a year into space, visiting dozens of orbiting hotels and sports complexes. The Hilton chain is already seriously working on plans for its first orbital resort.
Of course, tourism is only one part of what businesses hope to accomplish in space. Alloys made there are exceptionally strong because they lack the defects caused when gravity swirls the molten metal. Impurity-free pharmaceuticals can be produced in microgravity by mixing the constituent chemicals in midair, without ever touching containers that might contaminate them. And some superconducting crystals can only be grown in microgravity.
All of those things that can be done in what the space-business community calls LEO—Low Earth Orbit. But, just like Andy Griffith’s character on Salvage 1, today’s businesses also have their sights set on the moon. For instance, the Artemis Project is a private venture bent on establishing a permanent, self-supporting lunar community. Among the possible uses: the ultimate retirement home. After all, you don’t have to worry about breaking your hip when you fall in slow motion and only weigh one-sixth of what you did on Earth.
Now, yes, there will always be a role for government-funded manned space flight. Basic exploration should be done for reasons other than making a buck. And I do believe governments should be working hard to establish permanent settlements off-Earth so that humanity will survive even the worst terrorist or environmental disaster.
But in other areas, the government should butt out, and let the capitalists take their shot. Dan Goldin, the former Administrator of NASA, had a mantra: “Better, faster, cheaper.” Of course, he was never able to make that work in the bloated bureaucracy he headed. But those same goals are routinely achieved by businesses. Where governments fail—on Earth or out amo
ng the stars—the private sector will succeed.
Andy Griffith’s Harry Broderick character had a dream. So do I. I dream of going to space. No government is going to make that happen for regular guys like me. But private business will—because there are customers willing to pay for it. The bottom line is still the bottom line, even out on the final frontier.
Science, Salvation, and Atwood
Brian Bethune, the books editor at Maclean’s: Canada’s Weekly Newsmagazine, found reading Margaret Atwood’s science-fiction novel Oryx and Crake depressing. A fan of my optimistic futures, he called me up and commissioned this essay, which ran as a counterpoint to his profile of Atwood in Maclean’s April 28, 2003, issue.
About a third of the way through Margaret Atwood’s new science-fiction novel Oryx and Crake, Oryx—a former child prostitute from Southeast Asia—says: “Why do you want to talk about ugly things? We should think only beautiful things, as much as we can. There is so much beautiful in the world if you look around. You are looking only at the dirt under your feet. It’s not good for you.”
That’s advice Atwood herself should take. Oryx and Crake wallows in a thoroughly unpleasant version of the near future, a world of total environmental degradation and genetic engineering run amuck. In Atwood’s view, every problem we face now is going to get worse, not better.
I disagree. Human ingenuity will give all of us a wonderfully positive future. Take the environment, for instance. The ecology movement started in the early 1960s, with a work of nonfiction (Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, 1962) and a work of science fiction (Frank Herbert’s Dune, 1965), and is now in full swing.
There’s nothing wrong with science fiction telling cautionary tales: if this goes on, that awful reality will come to pass. But Atwood’s this is not going on; we’ve already hit the brakes on environmental decay. To publish a novel after Canada has signed the Kyoto accords that tells us the environment is going to hell in a handbasket is to have missed the prophetic boat by decades.