Technological advances are generally
viewed as blessings. Improved technologies often enable us to satisfy
our needs and desires more successfully. They also enable individuals
to do things by themselves that could only be accomplished in the
past by large groups of people. Many tasks that used to require great
outlays of time and resources can now be accomplished more quickly
and economically.
With all these benefits it may be difficult to keep
in mind some hidden dangers that technological advances bring with
them, dangers that might someday threaten the very existence of
personal freedom.
One of the dangerous features of
technology is that it cares not at all for human values. It simply
increases our ability to do things. Whether those things are good or
evil makes no difference whatsoever as far as technology is
concerned.
An even more dangerous feature of technology is that it
seems to have no limits. It just goes on and on, putting more and more power
into the hands of more people. As the power of individuals increases,
seemingly without end - as we become more and more capable of doing
greater and greater harm to larger and larger numbers of our fellow-citizens -
there is likely to be an ever-increasing pressure to restrict
personal liberty.
We can find many examples in history
that illustrate the way technology has increased the power of
individuals or relatively small groups. In 1950 only the richest and
most advanced nations in the world could produce atomic weapons. Now
it is likely that any nation with the desire to do so could equip
itself with nuclear devices. Advances in technology have made it
possible for poor countries to do what only the rich could do in the
past. This trend will continue. With every year that passes it will
became easier and more economical to build an atomic bomb.
What will
happen when an individual has the capacity to build an atomic bomb in
his or her basement? This possibility may be much closer than we
think. More than twenty years ago a book appeared describing a
college student’s physics project: to design, but not build, an
atomic bomb. The project was successfully completed and caused
serious concerns for a number of federal agencies. (Phillips, John
Aristotle and David Michaelis. Mushroom: The Story of the A-Bomb
Kid. William Morrow & Company, 1978.)
As technology advances, homemade atomic
bombs may be the least of our worries. Genetic engineering, once the
domain of Nobel laureates and million-dollar labs, is already within
the reach of the weekend hobbyist. If you want to, you can already
try to engineer lethal bacteria in your garage workshop. How should
your neighbors feel about something like that? What should the
government do about it? Bacteria are everywhere and certainly can’t
be outlawed. The equipment needed is relatively simple; if we make it
illegal to buy, you can probably construct it yourself. The knowledge
needed is already in the public domain. What else can we do? Monitor
what people are up to in their garages?
Computer technology has also put vastly
greater power into the hands of individuals than they have ever known
before. Experienced hackers can now cause difficulties for millions
of people, and cause millions of dollars worth of damage. In 1900 no
teenager in the world had any chance of causing confusion or
devastation across an entire nation. Now any teenager with a little
knowledge and access to a computer can take a shot at it. How do we
respond to a threat like this? Monitor what people are doing on the
Internet?
These are only a few examples. As
technology continues to progress, the power of individual human
beings to do harm will continue to increase in many areas. Efforts to
restrict the flow of potentially dangerous information will probably
fail. Knowledge about reality and the way the world works - which is
really what technology is - will be hard to keep secret. Efforts to
outlaw tools or raw materials with potentially dangerous applications
are also likely to fail. If such materials cannot be purchased
legally they will be purchased illegally. If they cannot be purchased
illegally they will be built or produced from scratch. If they cannot
be built or produced from scratch technological ingenuity will simply
find a new method for producing the desired result - a method that
does not use the outlawed tools or raw materials.
We have always known that an excess of
governmental power is a danger to freedom. Will we find that an
excess of personal power makes freedom impossible? We may one day
discover that a prerequisite to individual freedom is individual
weakness. A world in which private individuals have the power to
harm, destroy, or kill on scales never before imagined may be a world
entirely incompatible with personal freedom. As the power of
individuals comes to rival the power once wielded by entire nations
will it not become necessary to monitor the activities of those
individuals as closely as nations try to monitor each others
activities now?
Technology will continue to advance.
There is no way to stop it. The power we have to harm each other will
continue to grow. Demands for individual freedom and personal privacy
will become ever more difficult to justify. There may come a day when
individual human beings are simply too powerful to be left alone-
when we are simply too powerful, and too dangerous, to be free. I am
not sure if there is a solution to this problem. I AM sure we need to
start thinking about it.
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[This book discusses some of the unintended consequences future technological advances may have on human society.]
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Copyright © 2016 by Joseph Wayne Gadway
