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Deus Ex Writer Discusses 'Dangerous Technology' 479

Posted by michael from the skynet dept.
Dan Weaver writes "One of the writers for the exceptionally good action RPG Deus Ex has authored a rather thought-provoking Salon article on the Bill-Joy theme of dangers posed by emergent technologies and the difficulties that police states (both pleasant and not-so-pleasant) encounter in dealing with them. In the light of revelations about China's tardiness and confusion in addressing the SARS epidemic, this article is particularly timely."
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Deus Ex Writer Discusses 'Dangerous Technology' More

Deus Ex Writer Discusses 'Dangerous Technology'

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  • police states (both pleasant and not-so-pleasant) (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Threni ( 635302 ) on Tuesday April 08, 2003 @02:36PM (#5687569)
    What's a pleasant police state?

    • well, I'm in the USA (Score:3, Offtopic)

      by krog ( 25663 )
      and I find it pretty pleasant.

      at least we're not getting shelled, anyway.
      • Anyone who thinks the US is a true "police state" is automatically an intellectually devoid overreactionary. At least you didn't throw in "Nazi."

        • Re:well, I'm in the USA (Score:4, Insightful)

          by Elwood P Dowd ( 16933 ) <judgmentalist@gmail.com> on Tuesday April 08, 2003 @03:09PM (#5687788) Journal
          I agree. A much better example is that the USSR was pretty comfy for Communist Party officials, and Nazi Germany was plenty comfy for blue eyed blonds.

          • Re:well, I'm in the USA (Score:4, Interesting)

            by Trurl's Machine ( 651488 ) on Tuesday April 08, 2003 @04:46PM (#5688406) Journal
            I agree. A much better example is that the USSR was pretty comfy for Communist Party officials,

            A popular mistake, but still a mistake. In fact, the Communist Party officials lived in constant terror. Stalin was holding their closest relatives in gulags as hostages, and they themselves never knew the day of their fall. Communism was a living hell for everyone involved. Party officials in the first place.
            http://www.wsws.org/exhibits/1937/lecture1.htm
        • Anyone who thinks the US is a true "police state" is automatically an intellectually devoid overreactionary.

          Anyone who hasn't figured out that the United States is a police state just hasn't been paying attention. This is really not a matter of opinion. The fact is that the U.S. has a larger percentage of its population in prison than any other nation in the world. There are two possible explanations for this circumstance:

          One: we live in a police state.

          Two: Americans are more likely to be rotten s

          • But it is highly unlikely that neither explanation is true, because if so, why are so many Americans in prison?

            The third option is that the police system is superior, and thus catches a higher percentage of dangerous criminals...

            Not saying that is the case, but it IS another possible explanation

          • USA seems to have criminal subcultures that most countries in Europe don't have.

            I don't know if it's because of poor people not having many alternatives to crime, historical reasons, more open borders (criminals probably move more often) or because it's such a damn big place (hard to control and plan). (-: Go check some criminologist researchers, or something, don't discuss it with computer nerds like us... :-)

            Don't worry about USA being "special" in this way -- that kind of problems are probably coming

          • "A state in which the government exercises rigid and repressive controls over the social, economic, and political life of the people, especially by means of a secret police force."

            Above is the definition of police state. Sorry, the USA doesn't fit that description. Your observation that a lot of people are in jail could be easily tied to our strong economy.
          • "Anyone who hasn't figured out that the United States is a police state just hasn't been paying attention. This is really not a matter of opinion. The fact is that the U.S. has a larger percentage of its population in prison than any other nation in the world. There are two possible explanations for this circumstance: "

            The USA is a huge and diverse country. How can you take any aspect of it and simplify it down to only two options? Don't see a few shades of gray there?

          • Anyone who hasn't figured out that the United States is a police state just hasn't been paying attention. This is really not a matter of opinion. The fact is that the U.S. has a larger percentage of its population in prison than any other nation in the world. There are two possible explanations for this circumstance:

            There are two types of people in the world: those that divide everything into two possibilities and those that don't. Is it possible there are several reasons, including that the U.S., like

        • Re:well, I'm in the USA (Score:5, Insightful)

          by jo42 ( 227475 ) on Tuesday April 08, 2003 @04:26PM (#5688269) Homepage
          1 out of every 142 Americans is in jail (source: ABC News).

          If that isn't a police state, I don't know what is...

        • Re:well, I'm in the USA (Score:5, Insightful)

          by maxpublic ( 450413 ) on Tuesday April 08, 2003 @05:08PM (#5688527) Homepage
          Anyone who thinks the US is a true "police state" is automatically an intellectually devoid overreactionary.

          Well now, that depends on what you think the minimum qualifications for a police state are.

          Right now the government can come and kidnap you, then imprison you indefinitely without any recourse to the court system and in complete violation of the U.S. Constitution. I use the word 'kidnap' because they don't even have to arrest you; all they have to do is declare that you're a 'material witness' to some unspecified crime.

          That's it. Piss someone off in power and away you go, with no chance of regaining your freedom until those in power choose to let you go.

          How anyone can see this as anything but a characteristic of a police state is beyond me. Guess your definition of 'freedom' allows you to overlook those kinds of abuses - so long as they don't happen to you, eh?

          Max
      • As usual, there is a group calling the US a police state. First of all, we do not put soldiers in our civilian population, we put them other people's civilian population. Perhaps if other countries would simply rise up and kill their own butcherous leaders, we wouldnt have to. We already did ours, in 1776, and now they are our friends.

        But on the issue of police states, to compare to France or Germany, which are quite liberal and free states:

        In America, you can still be a Nazi. its tolorated here in th

        • Re:Oh yea, the USA really sucks (Score:2, Interesting)

          by Anonymous Coward
          there is a group calling the US a police state.

          Only because it's true. [wired.com]

          First of all, we do not put soldiers in our civilian population, we put them other people's civilian population.

          Like the National Guardsmen who point assault rifles at innocent people who can't stand on one leg because they're recovering from an injury?

          Perhaps if other countries would simply rise up and kill their own butcherous leaders, we wouldnt have to.

          The thing is that even if they don't rise up, you still don't have to.
          • The sanctions were only working if your goal was to opress the people of Iraq.

            I haven't been searched or gone through a metal detector in the last 10 US malls I have been to (or any mall for that matter). Maybe he was from Compton which is gang infested?

            Ireland had some pretty heavily armed military types delivering money to the banks when I was there (can't remember if they were military or just special division of cops, all carried SMG, kind of scary). This was in rural northwest Ireland too (Ballina

        • Ah, But... (Score:5, Insightful)

          by Blue Stone ( 582566 ) on Tuesday April 08, 2003 @04:42PM (#5688378) Homepage Journal
          ...The times, they are a-changing....

          Laws enacted, and in the process of being enacted since 9-11, have and are turning America toward police-statehood.
          Detention without trial; without access to lawyers. Mass surveillance measures being created. The "Material Witness" laws being subverted...

          And America is not alone, The UK is also undergoing it's own particular form of Big Brother transformation.
          Just don't kid yourself it's not happening.
          Little by little, it is.

          One of the defining characteristics of a police state (though I'm no expert on the subject, by any means) to my mind, is the mass surveillance, monitoring, cataloging and tracking of the citizenry, for no real good reason.

          The Stazi used this means extensively, and the emergence of it in the US, UK, and elsewhere, seems to indicate (to me at least) that the people in charge, are moist in their underwear at the thought of being able to know who you are, where you are, where you've been, where you're going, who you know, who you've associated with, who you've talked to, what you've read/listened to/viewed, who your relatives are, who you care about, what you care about, etc. (the etc. might be a little redundant at this point.)

          I don't care what they need it for, whether to stop terrorists/crime/benefit fraud or whtever, on a personal level, that makes anyone who opposes me in any way, in any kind of dispute, whether because I'm fighting the building of houses on allotments, or the re-development of public land, or some bogus council activity, right up to fighting the government in court, a much greater threat than they have any right to be in a society that is not a police state.

          That gives them the power to lean on me in ways that they could not, if they minded their own business, and got on with what they are supposed to be doing: representing my own and other common people's interests.

          It gives them immense power over the populace that they are supposed to serve.

          It isn't fully formed yet, but the Big brother Beast is growing in the womb; limbs and features, already visible.
          Police State?
          Maybe not today, but someday, soon, and perhaps for the rest of your life.

          On a side note, two things: The US has banned the burning of crosses [in public at least] as constituting racial harassment (the term used was somewhat different, but I forget, just having heard it on the radio.) maybe the Nazi/Jew thing will be dealt with in the same manner, in the future.

          And, Pharmboy, you said, "Perhaps if other countries would simply rise up and kill their own butcherous leaders, we wouldnt have to."

          I know it's like shooting fish in a barrel, and a pretty easy riposte, but...
          ...maybe they wouldn't have to rise up, if the US (and other developed, Northern Bloc countries) didn't enable, arm and support their butcherous leaders in the bloody first place!

        • In the US, it is ILLEGAL to put the military on the boarders

          Since when did the illegality of something ever stop our government from doing it?

          And don't think that this is shot at just the current administration. During Clinton's tenure, the FBI paid snipers to shoot and kill the wife and infant son of a suspect (ruby ridge).

          I can understand how someone can love their country, but that doesn't mean we should trust our government.

        • I find it ironic that one of your examples of how free the US is is that you have the right to be a Nazi.
        • I'm proud to be an American, but I despise the US government. Our current President is a snivelling coward (Daddy helped him stay out of Vietnam) who is willing to put our best and brightest in harm's way, but at the same time is cutting their VA benefits. That's respecting our troops! Ha-ha!

          <rant>

          The US has contributed to attrocities throughout the world that make Saddam Hussein and his ilk seem like schoolyard bullies by comparison, from the oil-industry-sponsored genocide in East Timor and Nig
      • I just read somewhere that nearly 1% of the total USA population is currently in jail. That includes children an elderly so it's pretty save to asume a lot more than 1 out of every 100 men is in jail at any given time. I don't see what's pleasant about a country where 1 out of every 100 people is considered such a harm to society they have to be temporarily removed from it.
    • Pleasant or not-so-pleasant, first we should note that police state is a tautology [ainfos.ca].
    • Well... I'm told it's pleasant, never actually been there myself. Problem is if you don't fit into the government template of a model citizen you won't be particularly happy there. But then, no place is perfect -- the quality of curry that comes out of Singapore is more than enough to make up for whatever other shortcomings the country may have.

  • Trends, Big Brother, etc. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Acidic_Diarrhea ( 641390 ) on Tuesday April 08, 2003 @02:40PM (#5687610) Homepage Journal
    Here's a question that I'm mulling over as a result of reading the synopsis of this article. With all the literary and cinematic works that have been made which deal with a Big Brother-like state [for lack of a shorter term], why is it that the governments of the world are still able to move in the directions outlined in those works? It seems like no matter how embedded in our culture the idea that certain traits of governments are bad and that we must rally against them, these traits continue to crop up. Consider this, has the U.S. become more or less like the vision of 1984 since publication?
    • the term for "1984" style books is Negative Utopia. And besides, i think 1984 wasn't really all that good of a negative utopia...it focused more on brutal police states that were becoming big at the time, but have little relevence to non-3rd world countries this day in age. Brave New World, OTOH, might be a better indication of were we are heading.

    • Re:Trends, Big Brother, etc. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Angry White Guy ( 521337 ) <CaptainBurly[AT]goodbadmovies.com> on Tuesday April 08, 2003 @02:59PM (#5687720)
      It is because the people who are the most at risk are usually working too much to do anything about it, living from paycheque to paycheque. When you have your own problems, who cares if the government is picking on the immigrants. Who cares that e-mail's getting bugged? Who cares if some crack addict got the living sh*t kicked out of him for speeding in California. The other side of the coin is the guy who has enough money to live like a king, has influence in the community. Are they going to upset the boat? No, because its these laws that help keep them where they are. The balance of power is just that, a balance. You take too much, and the people have nothing. When they have nothing, then they have nothing to lose, and that's when civil revolt occurs. Read Macheiovelli's 'The Prince' for a much better understanding of what's going on in the world, and what has gone on in the world since we started walking upright.

      • Re:Trends, Big Brother, etc. (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Iguanaphobic ( 31670 ) on Tuesday April 08, 2003 @04:29PM (#5688294)
        The subject [commondreams.org] of this article will care. And all of his cousins who've lost mothers and sisters will care too. The US response to this will be... PATRIOT2, more draconian legislation to take away more of the citizens "rights". The current administration has guaranteed an endless supply of Bin Ladens. One of them will get through and then...

        I saw this in another thread last night. Someone posted it AC and I can't find a Google for it. It hits the nail right on the head though.

        One constant throughout human history has been the struggle between the "haves" and the "have nots." For the purpose of this discussion, I will refer to the "haves" as "the elite" and will call the "have nots" "the rabble." I am doing this to emphasize the fact that the rabble, while comprising most of the population, is almost always pitifully weak and disorganized, thanks to constant manipulation by the elite. "Divide and conquer" has always been the name of the game here; it has always been easy for the elite to manipulate public opinion and keep the rabble squabbling among each other.

        The elite, though comprising only 1% of the population (the exact percentages are arguable, though the figures I am using are in the right ballpark), control most of the wealth. (In modern America, one has to be worth at least $100 million to be a serious player.) The elite don't have to work per se; they spend their time making deals, which, although stressful at times, is much too stimulating to fall into the realm of institutionalized drudgery which people commonly refer to as "work."
        Falling below the elite in status and power are what could be called "elite wannabes," "lackeys of the elite," or "wealthy rabble." These people are very wealthy by rabble standards.

        Power and status are hardwired into human behavior. Before the rise of agriculture, when humans were nomadic hunter-gatherers, it was difficult to accumulate power and status, since possessions were limited by what people could carry with them. There were probably powerful lineages that got passed through the generations, but the gap between the powerful and everybody else was limited due to the nature of their lifestyle.

        All this changed with the rise of agriculture approximately 10,000 years ago. For the first time, people became sedentary, and they produced surpluses of grain which had to be defended. These surpluses meant unprecedented power for whoever was able to control them, and the first elite was born. For the first time, organized war became possible.

        Howard Zinn's "A Peoples' History of America" describes the real dynamics at work behind the American Revolution. Rather than some idealistic "liberty and justice for all," the American Revolution was actually fomented by the American elite, who chafed under the British royalty.

        It has been pointed out that by fighting an enemy, one takes on many of the characteristics of that enemy. Interestingly, it was World War 2 when America became a fascist power. By fascism, I am referring to Mussolini's definition: "Fascism should more properly be called corporatism, since it is the merger of state and corporate power."

        By 1945, state and corporate power in America had merged into what was later termed the "military-industrial complex," even though it wasn't until 1961 that Dwight Eisenhower gave his famous speech warning America about a system that had already been in place for 15 years.

        Even though America had become fascist by 1945, there remained a vast amount of consolidation to do: there still remained the rabble and their pesky vote (an archaic carryover from the Revolutionary War era). The rabble had recently suffered two major traumas -- the Great Depression and World War Two, and had reached an unprecedented level of solidarity. The rabble had become dangerous, and it was necessary to manipulate them back into their customary position of helplessness, while at the same time enhancing the power of t
        • Weaken the federal government as much as possible, while keeping the military as strong as possible. This is done by starving the government of funding (except for military spending, of course), and by doing away with any and all government regulations.

          I was in total agreement until this. The federal government is *not* weakening by any means. Quite the contrary -- the federal government is growing in power and expense, and has been growing strong since the introduction of the federal income tax. It is ce

    • Re:Trends, Big Brother, etc. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by f97tosc ( 578893 ) on Tuesday April 08, 2003 @03:10PM (#5687791)
      Consider this, has the U.S. become more or less like the vision of 1984 since publication?

      In general, I believe that it is a myth that we had some super-democratic past, and that American society is getting less and less democratic.

      Take for example discrimmination at airports against arab-americans; or the background checks of immigrant arabs. Well, I am not saying it is right, but it is nothing compared to the treatment of ethnic Japanese during WW2. They were locked up for years even though they were US citizens.

      I don't like everything in the Patriot act either but to say that it constitutes a strong trend towards an Orwellian 1984 is not very well grounded in history. Did you know, for example, that during Washington's presidency it was illegal to criticize the president in print? This is much worse than all these questionable patent and copyright laws.

      Tor

      • Re:Trends, Big Brother, etc. (Score:4, Interesting)

        by ScuzzMonkey ( 208981 ) on Tuesday April 08, 2003 @03:30PM (#5687916) Homepage
        Your point is excellent, but of course the reason that things have generally improved in these matters is exactly because of that perception and a willingness to act on it to block such extreme measures. It's that public pressure that keeps it down, not some general inclination toward the common good on the part of those in power.

        As an aside, I think there is a pretty strong case that America is getting less and less democratic (not in the pure sense of the word, of course, but representatively democratic, as it was intended to be). It essentially has to do with the fact that the citizen/representative ratio has grown much larger than the founders could ever have expected. With so many constituents to such a small number of representatives, it shouldn't be any surprise that our views are represented much less democratically than in the past.

        This is not at cross-points to your point, mind you--it's perfectly possible (and probably even natural) for a democratic decision to result in less freedom for a minority (or perceived minority). Those issues were really a failing of the judiciary, which is theoretically immune from democratic pressures, to check the democratically elected executive and legislative branches.
      • "In general, I believe that it is a myth that we had some super-democratic past, and that American society is getting less and less democratic."

        I agree, but it's not about that, it's about "are we moving toward or away from "a democratic state" at any given time.

        At the moment, it appears to be, "away from."

    • Frog boiling and stupidity. (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Unknown Poltroon ( 31628 ) <unknown_poltroon1sp@myahoo.com> on Tuesday April 08, 2003 @03:13PM (#5687797)
      THey reduce rights a bit at a time, in a kneejerk response to something, and you never get them back, because anyone who tries to roll it back gets accused of being immoral, or encouraging crime.

      The stupidity comes in because even when you point it out, people say that it dosent affect me, or have been brainwashed enough so that they prefer the new way, same as how people follow religion, even though you can point out where its wrong..

    • Here's a question that I'm mulling over as a result of reading the synopsis of this article. With all the literary and cinematic works that have been made which deal with a Big Brother-like state [for lack of a shorter term], why is it that the governments of the world are still able to move in the directions outlined in those works? It seems like no matter how embedded in our culture the idea that certain traits of governments are bad and that we must rally against them, these traits continue to crop up.

  • Fictional Writer (Score:3, Insightful)

    by FortKnox ( 169099 ) on Tuesday April 08, 2003 @02:40PM (#5687611) Homepage Journal
    Take this article with a grain of salt.
    We are talking about a good science fictional game writer (that helped write a game about conspiracy theories, and a terrible future), writing about conspiracy theories and a terrible future.

    I'm sure he has insight, but he also has an active imagination (not necessarily a bad thing, but, like I said, take it with a grain of salt).
    • Not only this but labeling SARS as an "epidemic" is the same as the hoax where the kid said Hong Kong was being listed as an infected city. SARS has reached 100 deaths, and they are getting a handle on the disease and understanding it more.

      Sensationalist journalism at it's finest points, authored by a sci-fi game writer.

    • Re:Fictional Writer (Score:5, Insightful)

      by L7_ ( 645377 ) on Tuesday April 08, 2003 @03:04PM (#5687749)
      No.

      You are almost saying that because he writes fiction he can't think about the state of the world. That seems a very limited view. I mean, what special knowledge MUST one have to be able to criticize or comment on something? The author, it seems, has made a life studying technology, its ramifications, and plausible futures. So, when commenting on said technology, I would actually not take his comments "with a grain of salt" but rather as an educated opinion of the state of the world's technology.

      I can't think of a better background for a person to have to comment on the things that he is commenting on.

      • Re:Fictional Writer (Score:2, Interesting)

        by FortKnox ( 169099 )
        You are almost saying that because he writes fiction he can't think about the state of the world. That seems a very limited view. I mean, what special knowledge MUST one have to be able to criticize or comment on something?

        Yes, he does think about the state of the world, and he does have an educated view, but he ALSO has his own 'world' that he thinks the world is becoming. Does he have an overactive imagination? Have you played Deus Ex?
    • We are talking about a good science fictional game writer (that helped write a game about conspiracy theories, and a terrible future), writing about conspiracy theories and a terrible future.

      I'm sure he has insight, but he also has an active imagination (not necessarily a bad thing, but, like I said, take it with a grain of salt).

      the same thing was said about Arthur C. Clarke about his wild ass ideas about putting devices in space to allow global communication.

      those silly Sci-Fi writers.. they'll say a
    • I haven't yet read the article, and so cannot comment on it, but my intuition and experience with these kind of diatribes tell me you are right on the mark.

      Take the Bill Joy piece referenced in the write up, for example. While amusing, it was an unbelievably far-out vision of a near future full of hyped up sci-fi scenarios (robots come alive, nano-tech grey goo etc. etc.) that are rarely discussed in anywhere but in pulp fiction. Bill Joy is smart and rich, I grant him that (though he should go to hell for

  • Dangerous Technology? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by stanmann ( 602645 ) on Tuesday April 08, 2003 @02:43PM (#5687626) Journal
    There is not any such thing as technology that is inherently Dangerous.

    Guns --designed to "kill"... When used correctly allow an 80 year old woman to be safe in her home(if used properly; which for an 80 year old woman means shooting first fast and accurately)
    Cloning-- can be abused to build "organ farms" and can also allow(someday) those who cannot have children "normally" and have the legitimate "selfish" desire to have a child of their own genetic makeup to do just that.

    Surveilance Technology-- goes hand in hand with communication technology... allowing those being watched to organize to fight the abuses of that same tech.
    • Cloning-- can be abused to build "organ farms" and can also allow(someday) those who cannot have children "normally" and have the legitimate "selfish" desire to have a child of their own genetic makeup to do just that.

      Umm since when did that become a legitimate desire? Every other human being is made with at most half your genetic make-up, and most that want perfect clones of themselves suffer from the delusion that their "children" will be exactly like them or a "better" version of them, or some "perfect
    • There is not any such thing as technology that is inherently Dangerous. Guns --designed to "kill"..

      Rubbish. That's like saying that a razor-sharp, foot-long knife is as likely to cut you as a swivel chair. Some tools are (suprise, suprise) remarkably apt to a single purpose.

      When used correctly allow an 80 year old woman to be safe in her home

      What you mean to say that her gun is by design inherently dangerous to would-be burglars.
    • There is not any such thing as technology that is inherently Dangerous.

      bzzzt, thanks for playing, here are some lovely parting gifts...

      'dangerous' from Webster's: Attended or beset with danger; full of risk; perilous; hazardous; unsafe.

      One may adopt policies and follow procedures to minimize the inherent risk in handling, for instance, nitroglycerine, but ultimately the substance itself is unstable and there is the hazard of an explosion attendant upon all interactions with the stuff.

      I think that
    • "Guns --designed to "kill"... When used correctly allow an 80 year old woman to be safe in her home(if used properly; which for an 80 year old woman means shooting first fast and accurately)"

      Yeah, hi, I love the show, love hearing people's opinions, that's what made this country great. People. And opinions. And stuff. Most of all, guns. I've had it with people whining about 'guns kill people,' guns don't kill people, death kills people. Ask a doctor, it's a medical fact. You can't die from a bullet. You

    • There is not any such thing as technology that is inherently Dangerous.

      Sure there is.

      Airplanes, space shuttles, and race cars are examples of technology that are inherently dangerous even when used properly. Furthermore, even though steps can be taken to reduce the risk of operating these technologies, that risk can never be completely mitigated.

      Moral: all blanket statements are false ;)

    • Guns --designed to "kill"... When used correctly allow an 80 year old woman to be safe in her home(if used properly; which for an 80 year old woman means shooting first fast and accurately)

      I'm not going to dispute that guns have their uses; but to deny that they are inherently dangerous is to deny why they are useful. Sure, a squirt gun is useful as a toy, but this is not why guns are useful.

      A non-dangerous gun is a contradiction in terms.

      Some technology bears inherent dangers; what is important is b

  • So what (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Timesprout ( 579035 ) on Tuesday April 08, 2003 @02:46PM (#5687643)
    Mankind has been producing dangerous technology since we first learned to bang sticks and stones together. Responsible usage and control have worked for us so far.
    • "Responsible usage and control have worked for us so far."

      Err... and what would be your definition of reckless usage?
      Millions killed, wounded, poisoned, debilitated, oppressed?
      Already happened m8.

      Nuclear weapons turned on civillians? Happened.

      Chemical weapons.... happened.

      Does your definition of a mess up require that all mankind, save a few be-straggeled survivors perhaps, be wiped from the face of the earth???

  • SARS and Chinese timeliness (Score:5, Interesting)

    by squashed ( 664265 ) on Tuesday April 08, 2003 @02:50PM (#5687675)
    SARS is the Chernobyl of the Chinese government. Chernobyl taught the Russian people, and the world, the unprecedented dangers of a closed society in a highly technological era. Another aspect of the modern era is globalization and international mobility. Again, we see that a closed society is no longer tenable. SARS' underreporting and denials by the Chinese authorities, like Chernobyl, will bring severe, lasting political consequences for the regime, and may be an impetus that finally takes toward replacing the totalitarian political system.
    • Uhm. . . SARS is just a nasty pneumonia. People are acting like it's an aerosol form of AIDS or Ebola and that everybody who gets it inevitably dies. But in fact, it's already been well reported that most people who get SARS recover in a few weeks.
      I don't think you can compare a nasty flu strain to Chernobyl. The hype is because everybody was waiting to find out it had something to do with Saddam and at this point it's obvious that it doesn't and that Bush's whole cabinet is full of paranoid maniacs who
      • SARS is a nasty flu like illness, and I do think that too much hysteria is being generated over the problem; however, SARS is very dangerous. SARS is not so much dangerous because it has a high mortality rate, but rather because it is very contagious and likely to require medical support; imagine how the health care systems of the world would handle a full out spread of SARS. Hospitals would be overloaded and it would be impossible to treat immune suppressed people like AIDS, cancer and transplant patients.

      • Aye, they recover in a few weeks, with proper medical support. But what if the entire hospital is down with it? What if there *is* nobody to give you proper medical support?

        It's the easy of contagion that's the problem with SARS; you've got to go pretty far out of your way to get AIDS, or even the flu, but SARS, well, be in the same room as somebody, you've got a problem.

    • As opposed to the Chinese governments underreporting and denial of widespread HIV infection rates in some parts of rural China due to unsafe blood collection ? SARS is currently being tracked at about a 4% fatality rate and that largely correlates to 4% of the people infected being elderly. Many many more people have died and will die in China from HIV/AIDS than SARS and it shows no sign of destabilizing the government there.

  • welcome back to Nazi thinking (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    "Of course the people don't want war. But after all, it's the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it's always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it's a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger

    • Re:welcome back to Nazi thinking (Score:4, Insightful)

      by stwrtpj ( 518864 ) on Tuesday April 08, 2003 @05:52PM (#5688879) Journal

      "Of course the people don't want war. But after all, it's the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it's always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it's a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger."

      -- Herman Goering at the Nuremberg trials

      Why the hell is this moderated a troll? Get a clue, moderators. This quote is trying to make a point, and a damn good one.

      While I am not about to jump on the "America is a police state!" bandwagon, it is unfortunately very true that someone who knows how to work the system, or has a great deal of charisma, or both, can often bring people of a country around to a way of thinking that, in the long run, can prove disastrous, especially in times of crisis, whether real or perceived.

      This can be linked to the discussion at hand. One could, in a way, consider the current ease at which people can communicate with each other a "dangerous technology", in that someone able to mold human emotions and human will the way Hitler could would be able to reach millions of people very quickly and very easily.

      At the same time, this goes both ways. The same technology has fostered a sense of openess that has lead to the formation of several subcultures that value openness to the point where the people that tend to become the de-facto leaders that people look up to tend to get there by passing a sort of unofficial peer review. So perhaps Goering's statement does not ring as true today as it once did, but to ignore that danger and become complacent is to fail to learn from history and thus be doomed to repeat it. This is why when the US Congress started passing legislation that infringed on American citizens' rights, I was very happy when not everyone simply accepted this as necessary and actually spoke out against it.

      So someone mod the parent up a few points.

  • I was with him until I read... (Score:5, Funny)

    by anonymous loser ( 58627 ) on Tuesday April 08, 2003 @03:01PM (#5687734)
    Just as our sexual perversions have been reduced to shorthand notations such as "shemale posers," "older spreads," and "a peeing blonde," which lead to immediate gratification, so will our other desires be expressible in tiny coded epithets, icons, and services.

    Does anyone else see this as a VERY strange analogy to use in an otherwise technically-oriented article?

    • ya, that was pretty weird. Kind of Peter Townsend-esque. I just hope he doesnt know about this stuff from doing 'research'.

      Plus, is it just me, or does it seem all the good pr0n is difficult to find?

  • While writing for the computer game Deus Ex, I built a complete set of scripts in Dragon NaturallySpeaking to drive ConEdit, Ion Storm's proprietary conversation editor. I dictated over 8,000 lines of dialogue in a weird proto-language that sounded like this: "Placeholder speech. Replace speech. They're lying . All they want is to study your tissues . Update and close. Move up one. Camera shoulders left." I was a long way from chatting with Hal, but I was also a long way from when all I could say was the na

  • Agh, yes... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Millennium ( 2451 ) on Tuesday April 08, 2003 @03:08PM (#5687774)
    ...as a proposal for The Blackmail Society rears its abominable head once again. I had hoped it would be contained to one person, but I see it's starting to spread, if slowly for the time being. Still, this is horrible news, to see that even one more person has become infected by this memevirus of "transparency".

    In a world where people left the task of judging others to actual judges, this might be workable. But we won't see such a world in our lifetimes, if ever. It's in the nature of humanity to judge, and that's why privacy is so important. Without it, there's nothing to society but the pressure to conform, pressing in relentlessly, until the very thing which makes us human -our existence as free-willed individuals- is rendered meaningless. Laws exist to keep governments from becoming tyrannical. Privacy exists to keep society from becoming tyrranical. And yet, these guys see no alternative to totalitarianism, one way or the other, if they even see that their proposition is still slavery, just to a different master.

    Makes me sick. Perhaps we are doomed by our own technology; if so, then so be it. What good is life, if in order to save it we must give up everything that makes it worth living?

  • Misinformed submitter (Score:4, Funny)

    by Lord Bitman ( 95493 ) on Tuesday April 08, 2003 @03:17PM (#5687825)
    Everyone hated Deus Ex, did no one tell you?
  • I BOW TO DEUS EX.

    Seriously. That game rocked, and I mean rocked to the next level. Even though I am spending countless hours playing and replaying Morrowind right now, I STILL go back sometimes and play Deus Ex through, just to enjoy the story line.

    I hope Deus Ex 2 is just as good. If someone could do a Deus Ex mod for Morrowind I think they would attain sainthood.. *sigh* Ok enough ranting.. don't want the moderators to mod this down to the bottom of the ocean...

  • Writer was 1/2 right. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by gurps_npc ( 621217 ) on Tuesday April 08, 2003 @03:23PM (#5687884) Homepage
    The one thing he left out was that fact that that our new technologies are NEW and that they WILL result in major societial changes in NEW and unpredicatable ways.

    The Machine gun is a great example.

    Many people may not be aware, but the Machine Gun has Saved more soldiers lives than it has taken. In fact many people believe that the Machine Gun has saved more soldier lives than penicillian.

    Before the Machine Gun, 10 men could guard no more than 20 or so unarmed prisoners. Otherwise they rush you, take your weapon etc.

    Yes, it allowed prisons and concentration camps to grow, but before it, GENERALS COULD NOT ACCEPT THE SURRENDER OF THE ENEMEY EXCEPT AT THE END OF THE WAR

    You could not accept the surrender of one battalion, because you could not spare the men to guard them while your other forces went off to fight the next set of soldiers.

    So if people surrendered and it was not the last enemey combatants, you killed them. So no one surrended.

    The inventor of the Machine Gun did NOT realize he was allowing people to surrender, he thought he creating a horrendous killing machine.

    similarly, the new technolgies we are creating WILL surprise us, and will create NEW social structures that we did not have before.

    Society will evolve in a strange new manner, not the simple ideas propagated by these Science Fiction Authors mentioned by the writer.

    • Lifesavers, those machine guns! (Score:5, Informative)

      by Infonaut ( 96956 ) <infonaut@gmail.com> on Tuesday April 08, 2003 @04:42PM (#5688377) Homepage Journal
      20,000 British soldiers died at the hands of German Maxim machineguns on the first day of the Battle of the Somme in WWI.

      The trench warfare of WWI came about in large part because of the tremendous defensive power of the machinegun. Maneuver warfare, which might have shortened the war considerably, was impossible because no matter how much you "softened up" the enemy with artillery, machineguns would still be there to mow you down. The conditions in the trenches contributed to the death of at least twice as many soldiers as did enemy bullets.

      If you don't consider the Gatling Gun to be a "true machinegun", then the surrender of 12,000 Union troops at Harper's Ferry during the American Civil War seems to invalidate the claim that generals couldn't accept surrender.

      If you do consider the Gatling Gun to be a machinegun, then you could just go back a bit further, to 1805, when Napoleon's Grande Armee captured 30,000 Prussian and Russian soldiers at Austerlitz. No machine guns, Gatling Guns, or anything even close at the scene of that surrender, yet somehow it happened.

      I could go on and on with examples, but the point is that soldiers did surrender before the advent of the machine gun. The machine gun IS a killing device. It kills more efficiently than any other form of bullet-launcher.

      I don't consider machine guns to be evil, because I was often damned happy to have two M60s at my disposal as a platoon leader. But let's not pretend that machineguns have saved more lives than "penicillian".

  • Stronger Responsibility/Power Correlation Needed (Score:4, Interesting)

    by 4of12 ( 97621 ) on Tuesday April 08, 2003 @03:25PM (#5687886) Homepage Journal

    If we're going to have any hope of surviving a future in which many citizens have the power to create dangerous virii or in any way cause widespread death and devastation, then we're going to have to do a helluva a lot better job than we are now of creating responsible citizens.

    Rather than adopt the authoritarian solution of removing all power from as many people as possible and investing as much power as possible with a single "trusted" individual in the hopes of reducing the risks associated with an empowered citizenry, I'd much rather we at least implement better measures to given and take power from individuals based on their demonstrated level of responsibility. Not all or nothing, but a graded continuum. Some of that exists now: felons aren't supposed to get access to firearms in the U.S., for example.

    However, there are far too many exceptions to an ideal:

    • responsible people without power,
    • irresponsible people with power.
    Got a ways to go.

  • Usually technology brings its own balance (Score:5, Interesting)

    by OpenSourced ( 323149 ) on Tuesday April 08, 2003 @03:31PM (#5687931) Journal
    By the time a "Do your own genome" kit is available to to public, tools will be in the hands of goverments to reduce the menace of it. The article makes the error of extrapolating only a part of reality to the future, while keeping the rest of it at today's lever. I mean, by the time the terrorists have a "Do your own Ebola virus - NOW Improved, it kills faster!" kit, the goverments will have a "Make your own antibody - ALL antigens - guaranteed!" kit that will make all attemps to spread an epidemic seem moot.

    As far as I can imagine, the same rationale applies to other areas of science. It's not the lone terrorist that should worry us, it's big organizations (like goverments) that have the means and the people to be at the cutting edge. I mean, really, when you compare in history the damage made by terrorism or small organizations with the damage made by goverments, you can easily detect a pattern.

  • epidemics affect defined populations or geographical areas, pandemics affect large areas. This is becoming more of a global issue, so I think pandemic is a more fitting term, though I don't know if it has reached that magnitude. yet.

  • Limit of lethality to viruses (Score:4, Interesting)

    by kurtkilgor ( 99389 ) on Tuesday April 08, 2003 @03:46PM (#5688037)
    OK, so let's say you have a computer program and associated hardware that let you drag and drop little blocks to make the most lethal virus you can think of. Viruses that target humans have been evolving for as long as humans have, which is several million years. If it were possible to make a virus that would cause extremely massive casualties, don't you think it would have evolved already?

    It is not possible for a virus to kill more than a certain percentage of a population because at some point the population gets so sparse that the virus can no longer spread. When we consider modern methods of quarantine, disinfection, and treatment, I find the possibility of a highly lethal virus even less believable.

    The reason why biological weapons are scary is because they can spread a virus much more efficiently than it can spread itself. But making biological weapons requires big machines which, as the author says, are "easily visible by satellite." So I don't think he has much of an arugment.
    • If it were possible to make a virus that would cause extremely massive casualties, don't you think it would have evolved already?

      No, it absolutely would not have evolved already. Yes, viruses have been evolving forever, but their goal is not to destroy humanity- it's to create more viruses. Exterminating humankind would get in the way.

      Textbook: "Evolution by natural selection allows population pressure to gradually change an organism into something more likely to survive."

      A virsus that kills 100% of i
  • its unbelievable to me that people would be so quick to give up what has made this country great. What the heroes of WW1 and WW2 fought so bravely for...freedom. Land of the free, home of the brave my butt...this country is full of sniveling cowards who, at the first sign of danger, turn over what thousands have lain down their lives for. If the government ever outlaws knowledge, then i my friends will remain an outlaw, a new type of outlaw... THE GEEK OUTLAW!!! *smiles* I will never relinquish my basic fre

  • Motivation (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Jennifer E. Elaan ( 463827 ) on Tuesday April 08, 2003 @04:14PM (#5688215) Homepage
    A friend of mine and I discuss this quite often. It involves a balance between the increasing ability of people to kill enourmous amounts of people and the motivation to do so. We long ago reached the point where large governments have the power to eradicate all life on earth. The capability of the individual keeps rising.

    Stopping the access to the technology would require such things as destroying the internet and other worldwide mass-communications. Essentially, the technology won't go away. Police states are never 100% effective, which means that as soon as a technology like, say, bioweapons or antimatter ends up in the hands of average people, if someone has a motivation to use it, they will.

    The only way to stop this threat is to stop the motivation. Secure people generally do not commit crimes. If you have nothing to fear (poverty, hate crimes, etc) then you will be less likely to do these things. As the ability of individuals to secure weapons of mass destruction increases, we have to start thinking about making our society more content.

  • The Information - Knowledge gap (Score:4, Interesting)

    by sielwolf ( 246764 ) on Tuesday April 08, 2003 @04:30PM (#5688297) Homepage Journal
    I think one of the big holes in this article is the idea that information == knowledge. That anyone can comprehend (and diagnose and modify extensively) any and all information.

    Of course this is not the case. How many people use Linux and know each and every last piece of code (and I'm not talking about /. folks here, but people in general)? What about Windows? Hell, how many of us use Aspirin or airplanes and have little more than the basic understanding of how they work?

    The problem is this: the more advanced a society becomes, the more specialized its population becomes. That means the slight fraction one has knowledge of shrinks as time progresses even though they might know more than people a hundred years ago.

    So what has society done? Attempted to make any and all technology novice-usable. So I don't have to know how an ATM or automobile or cd players works to use it.

    So let's take the author's example of the Ebola-AIDS virus. Assuming that the above traits hold (that we become more specialized while technology grows more advanced yet usable) then anybody might be able to unleash Ebola-AIDS while only a handful of people would have the slightest idea how to stop it.

    Basically it's the Script-Kiddie Syndrome to the Nth degree. All I need is a Genome Rootkit and I can cause havoc. And who cares if I can't hack any and all persons? What if I just need to hit a 3rd world country that hasn't gotten the latest service pack? I could wipe out Zambia or Cambodia. We see this time and time again: the problem and the cure exist side by side. Yet for some reason the former gets out more than the latter. How often are sites hacked on year old exploits?

    Of course this is all hypotheticals. But it seems that the failing is something intrinsically human, not political or technological. So neither a police state or open utopia would solve any of this. Besides, the author's example is a wacky level of technology. Who knows. We might all be Wesley Crushers by then.
  • That's a lousy article.

    The real problem is the development of technologies that allow a small number of people to kill a large number of people. There are a few such technologies now, all involving radioactives, chemicals, or biologicals. Computers aren't an issue. Biology might be, as techniques improve.

    Any new technology that seems dangerous has to be compared aginst existing dangerous technologies. Cars, for example. Technologies with weapons implications have to be compared against what soldiers

  • Diversify (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Sloppy ( 14984 ) on Tuesday April 08, 2003 @05:15PM (#5688588) Homepage Journal
    I think that even some of the nastiest scenarios are survivable.

    For all the paranoia about stuff like SARS, I don't think Antarctic researchers or some guy who lives in a shack in Montana is going to catch it.

    Flesh eating nanobots? You darn well know there's going to be plenty of pockets of people who will microwave to death, any nanobots that get within 50 meters of them. Maybe they're nuts for not trusting the tech, just as they still don't want flouridation in their water. But long after the nanobot plague has ravaged the rest of humanity, they will still be around and they'll grin toothlessly at the thought that some guy said they were doomed. Their precious bodily fluids will remain pure.

    And it's not just a luddite thing. Even if the nanobots eat Joe Schmoe's flesh, they won't get Jane Schmoe, because her transhumanist polymer flesh isn't even compatable with the nanobots. Her defense isn't so much out of deliberate design, but just due to having different weaknesses.

    A lot of people didn't catch ILOVEYOU because they weren't dumb enough to run a program that treats data as code. But a lot of people didn't catch Code Red, not because their web server was somehow immune to buffer overflows, but because their web server was just different.

    Ebola schmebola. How are people going to catch Ebola from their cow-orkers if they never even meet except over a video-phone? How is my phone going to catch your phone virus if it exploits a mere implementation detail? You think we'll all have the same stuff or be in the same places or do the same things? "One world, one web, one program?" That'll be the day! We don't all want the same things! You might get a lot of us but you'll never get us all.

    Diversify, spread out, and compartmentalize. Take that to the extreme, and you can even survive Death Stars.

  • but I've been wondering for a few months now, is Sheldon Pacotti (the author of the article) a Scientologist? I've noticed that in several interviews (and in a couple of 'about the writer' sidelines) it's been mentioned that his novel, Demiurge, received a place in some sort of L. Ron Hubbard Writers of the Future Contest.

  • If you want a REAL impending doom... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by irritating environme ( 529534 ) on Tuesday April 08, 2003 @08:25PM (#5689845)
    Try the environmental threats that six billion people pose to our long-term welfare. From ozone depletion, freshwater pollution, global warming, species depletion, unchecked development, these are far more tangible than out-of-control grey goo.

    Bill Joy gets to look smart and visionary talking about science fiction fantasies that we read and play, but the real dangers to humanity are the good ol ones that people have been harping about for years.

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