Bill Joy 

(1954 – ) is an American computer scientist who co-founded Sun Microsystems in 1982 and

served as chief scientist at the company until 2003. Furthermore, Bill Joy’s “Why the Future Doesn’t

Need Us” caused a stir among the information technology community because of its dystopian vision

of the future and also the fact that Joy is a well-respected leader of the technology industry. The main

purpose of Bill Joy’s “Why the Future Doesn’t Need Us” is to highlight the possible threat of genetic

engineering, nanotechnology, and robotics (GNR) pose to the future of humanity.

As the main objective of genetic and robotics is the creation of improved species, humanity faces the

danger of annihilation in case of their success. It is a primary evolutional law that superior species

survive, whereas less perfect die in confrontation with them (Joy, 2009, p.288). Working on the

generation of perfect machines and organisms, people are pursuing an extremely dangerous dream

of being a creator of life. However, they create something that can destroy them if it gets out of

control.

In relation, Joy gives two discouraging scenarios of what might happen in regards to overtaking the

control. According to them, relying on machines infallibility will eventually make people so “dependent

on them that turning them off would amount to suicide” (Joy, 2009, p.286). In case people retain

control over the situation, there will emerge the privileged group, which will destroy the freedom of

common people by controlling their lives with the help of new technologies. Obviously, none of these

scenarios is desirable for the future.

Joy’s worries focus on the transforming technologies of the 21st century—genetics, nanotechnology,

and robotics (GNR). What is particularly problematic about them is their potential to self-replicate.

This makes them inherently more dangerous than 20th-century technologies—nuclear, biological, and

chemical weapons—which are expensive to build and require rare raw materials. By contrast, 21st-

century technologies allow for small groups or individuals to bring about massive destruction. Joy also

argues that we will soon achieve the computing power necessary to implement some of the scenarios
envisioned by Kurzweil and Moravec, but worries that we overestimate our design abilities. Such

hubris may lead to disaster.

For example, robotics is primarily motivated by the desire to be immortal—by downloading ourselves

into them. But Joy doesn’t believe that we will be human after the download or that the robots would

be our children. As for genetic engineering, it will create new crops, plants, and eventually new

species including many variations of human species, but Joy fears that we don’t know enough to

safely conduct such experiments. And nanotechnology confronts the so-called “gray goo” problem—

self-replicating nanobots out of control. In short, we may be on the verge of killing ourselves!

Lastly, he suggests changing an accepted attitude towards NGR technologies. While Hillis accepts

the idea of creating robots in order to provide eternal life, Bill Joy feels uncomfortable about that

(2009, p.288). He does not support Moravec’s idea of legislative regulations of superior robotic forms

of life either (Joy, 2009, p.288). He believes that the only possible way to prevent the nightmarish

scenarios coming to life is to reconsider the choice of utopia and set a new moral basis (Joy, 2009,

p.299). Joy supports Dalai Lama’s ideas of happiness, which exclude the material progress and

power of knowledge (2009, p.299).

Bill Joy suggests finding another way to express people’s creative powers, thus make a pause in

developing genetics, nanotechnology, and robotics. He uses the precedent of the biological weapon

relinquishment and the nuclear arm race history to demonstrate how what treat relating to this new

danger humanity is facing.

Apparently, he has reasons to be optimistic in terms of the establishment of the new ethics. When the

threat of extinction is undeniable, the survival instinct and common sense should prevail.

Nevertheless, as the previous experience showed, Hiroshima and Nagasaki had to be destroyed so

that people realized the destructive power of the nuclear weapon. Even a single case of using NGR

technologies as a weapon might be fatal.