Friday, October 31, 2008

Why the future doesn't need us

Throughout "Why the Future Doesn't need Us" by Bill Joy it states that if the human kind creates robots to be able to do more things than they can now, human kind will become extinct. If this occurs the only thing our race can do is sit back and watch it happen. Unless we prevent it in the short run. This can happen by not giving the robots complete control on what they get to do or how they act. Our race would still have to be active in the world to make sure that our race survives. With the companies today researching and trying to create robots the people could put the blame on them. When the robots become out of control the companies who programmed them will have set up our fate to become extinct. After reading some of AldousHuxley’s “Brave New World” it starts to connect to this article. The only difference is that there is genetic engineering instead of robots. In a Brave New World, society becomes consumed with things being perfect and in Why the Future Doesn’t need Us, the robots could want to do the same. Both of the works show that the future can be grim but our race can change it before things go terribly wrong. The author Bill Joy could be made out to be a fear monger since he seems very concerned about how the human race will become obsolete. He seems to act like he knows it will happen no matter what the race does to stop it but that might not be true. Joy argues this by stating that researchers are trying to create robots now that can do basic functions and that they may make them to be able to do the things our race can.