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 COLUMN
Immortality or extinction: It all hinges on your use of the Honor System Virus LAST WEEK WE talked about the doubling of computer power, now taken for granted after 35 years of Moore's Law. It seems likely to continue -- if not in silicon, then in molecular, biological, DNA, or other postsemiconductor forms of computing.
Now, for beach reading during these lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer, let me again suggest Ray Kurzweil's book, The Age of Spiritual Machines. It's about what happens when computers get smarter than humans. For more, see www.penguinputnam.com/kurzweil. Superhuman computers promise immortality. We'll upload our DNA and experience and become immortal entities on the Internet. Or we'll actually go on living in our bodies, thanks to continuing nanotechnological DNA repair. But superhuman computers also promise extinction. They enable runaway self-replication by lethal man-made viruses. At this point I hasten to warn about the so-called Honor System Virus now loose on the Internet. Instead of exploiting flaws in Microsoft's highly innovative, amazingly inexpensive, and tightly integrated software, the Honor System Virus relies instead on personal integrity. The subject field of the Honor System Virus clearly reads, "By opening this e-mail, you accept its terms. Are you sure?" If you decide to open the e-mail, its terms dictate that you must spread the virus by forwarding it to your entire address book. And then, on your honor, because it asked if you are sure, you must randomly delete half the files on your disk. Two factors keep the Honor System Virus from collapsing the Internet. The Clinton-Gore administration, dot-com stock promoters, and Metallica fans easily rationalize away their acceptance of the terms, thereby damping the virus below critical mass, like control rods in some sort of integrity reactor. It also helps that randomly deleting half the files on its disk is unlikely to do your average PC any real damage. Of course the most dangerous runaway self-replications will not be in software like the Honor System Virus. Watch out for real viruses designed to kill. Bill Joy, chief scientist of Sun Microsystems, wrote an acclaimed article on runaway self-replication in the April issue of Wired magazine. See www.wired.com/wired/archive/8.04/joy_pr.html. Joy contends that increasing computer power, say by a factor of a trillion, will make it possible for almost anyone with a PC to design biotech viruses that could end all human life. Even I find it hard to joke about this. Joy likens our situation to a jetliner in which every passenger has a button on their tray table that, if pushed, blows up the plane. And you think today's airport security is a hassle. Joy concludes that scientists who might work on technologies that could lead to runaway self-replication should agree, on their honor, not to. Among weapons of mass destruction enthusiasts this is called "relinquishment." Virginia Postrel, editor of Reason magazine (www.reason.org), disagrees with Joy. She appeared at Vortex (www.vortex.net) to argue that it is folly to rely on relinquishment -- the honor system -- to avoid dangerous science. Postrel takes the "dynamist" point of view (www.dynamist.com): By pursuing dangerous technologies we develop their antidotes. Joy will speak in October at our annual pro-bono technology conference in Camden, Maine. The conference is PopTech; the theme is Being Human in the Digital Age. There Joy expects to meet more people who disagree with him. PopTech will confront what happens when the irresistible force of new technology meets the immovable object of human nature. Topics will include connectedness, privacy, censorship, tribalism, ethics, entertainment, body, brain, creativity, spirituality, and self-replication. If you think you might like to attend PopTech, hurry to learn more and sign up at www.poptech.org. Technology pundit Bob Metcalfe 's book of selected columns is already in its second printing. Send your reviews of Internet Collapses and Other InfoWorld Punditry to metcalfe@infoworld.com.  RELATED SUBJECTS  SecurityMORE > SPONSORED WHITE PAPERS 
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