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[fishsupreme]

The writer for the dystopian computer game series Deus Ex has some very interesting things to say about the control of information in the modern era: Are We Doomed Yet?

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[fishsupreme]

I very much like many of Ray Kurzweil's ideas on the future, and think that some of these technologies (assuming some of them pan out, which seems likely) could lead to a new golden age, simultaneously vastly decreasing material privation and increasing freedom. However, Pacotti and Bill Joy both have a point with regard to these technologies (specifically the "singularity" technologies of strong artificial intelligence and nanotechnology) -- they're dangerous, on a scale that no technology, even the atomic bomb, has ever been.

Intrusive, totalitarian government is, in my opinion, by far the greatest threat to the promise these technologies have -- both in terms of the potential lost opportunity if they never come to pass thanks to government repression, but also in how unprepared the world will be for the threat these technologies pose if only government-approved individuals are "allowed" to pursue them.

One psychotic genius with a nanotech assembler could destroy human civilization if none of the sane geniuses of the world are allowed to work on defending it.