Putting on the Ritz: Grey Goo and the End of the World

The 6^th century Christian philosopher, Boethius, conceived a view of fate as a wheel of fortune in his text The Consolation of Philosophy. For every upward movement of the wheel there would be a downward movement, for every rotation man would find himself either in a state of good fortune or of suffering: “I know how Fortune is ever most friendly and alluring to those whom she strives to deceive, until she overwhelms them with grief beyond bearing, by deserting them when least expected” (25). Newton would latter take a similar stance in his Principia, what we know as Newton’s 3^rd Law of Motion: “To every action there is always opposed an equal reaction; or the mutual actions of two bodies upon each other are always equal, and directed to contrary parts”. The wheel was a force of cosmic balance, while at the same time it left man to the whims of its fancy. For Boethius, it explained the inconceivable patterns in a mans life, how one day one is a ruler and the next his their head is on the block.

Joel Garreau, after he laid out what the world would look like were its fortune to swing upward toward Heaven follows this vision, in his book Radical Evolution, with its counter argument for the world, and mankind, were the wheel to take us in the opposite direction, toward Hell; “Theories of progress are mirrored by theories of collapse” (149). Garreau, in his chapter titled Hell, begins and ends his exploration of “theories of collapse” with an examination of Sun Microsystems co-founder Bill Joy‘s idea of the future of the world as governed by the unrestrained, and unchecked development of technology. In the Hell chapter, Joy puts forward, what he believes, would be the end result of man’s over reliance on technology, and man’s inability to comprehend what that portends. In an article that appeared in Wired titled “Why the Future Doesn’t Need Us” (see above link under ‘Bill Joy’)(138) Joy posited a landscape that was, more likely than not, bare of any trace of mankind, at least in the sense that we understand it, and more likely than not, free of any trace of any biological matter. Joy sees in the same four technologies, that Kurzweil and the other thinkers presented in the Heaven scenario, incontrovertible evidence of mans decent into civil war, extinction, and chaos. Throughout the book Garreau explores these four technologies, what he calls GRIN: genetics, robotics, information, and nanotechnology, to discern what effect they will have on our future; Joy sees the greatest threat to humanity rising out of the genetics, robotics, and nanotechnologies branches of GRIN, his three horsemen of the apocalypse. “Genetic technology…makes possible the creation of ‘white plagues’ designed to kill widely but specifically” (139). These “white plagues” would come from genetically engineered super viruses, chimeras, which would have the capability to wipe out large numbers of a population while also being resistant to antidotes or vaccines. These types of viruses are now in their infancy, but have been shown, as in the case of the engineered mouse pox virus, to kill up to 100% of their targeted population (147). When it comes to robotics, Joy sees the state of man being reduced to the role of “pathetic zombies” to their vastly superior robotic creations: “The robots would in no sense be our children…on this path our humanity may well be lost” (139). And with nanotechnology, Joy puts forward a world in which all biota are devoured by a swarm of uncontrollable nanomachines, which “suck everything vital out of all living things” (139). Of all the end game scenarios that Joy puts forward the one that recurs with a number of different thinkers in this chapter is the ever increasing gap between the humans who have been genetically enhanced and those that have not, a kind of revised version of the “haves” and the “have nots” (139). In particular, this is one of the main concern for the ethicist Francis Fukuyama.

Fukuyama sees the gap between individuals that can afford the ability to enhance their bodies and those that cannot becoming increasingly advanced. For Fukuyama those individuals that have undergone procedures to enhance their bodies (he calls them “posthuman“) will so far outstrip those that have not been enhanced that there will be no opportunity for the latter to catch up, to bridge the gap. As a result, Fukuyama predicts the possibility of mob violence and civil war. He puts his view in perspective via the cotton gin.

The cotton gin was bad…In the late 1700s, slavery was becoming unprofitable in America. It might soon have waned. Eli Whitney’s clever invention, however, made lucrative the use of slaves to harvest cotton. So bondage expanded. The ultimate result was the bloodiest conflict in American history, the Civil War. (161)

In addition to the question of equality, Fukuyama is also concerned with what these enhancements of the body will mean for human nature. “Human nature exists, is a meaningful concept, and has provided a stable continuity to our experience as a species” is how he levies the stakes (155). For Fukuyama the question is how much can we force ourselves to expand our evolutionary output, and still retain the nobleness at the core of our beings, our humanness; which he is concerned is quickly deteriorating in humanity.

Some of the thinkers portrayed in this chapter see even more extreme possibilities for catastrophe than either Joy or Fukuyama; Martin Rees, astronomer royal of the United Kingdom, for example, sees the possibility of a future where, not only, is humanity gone from the picture, but that the very fabric of space-time could be breached, destroying not only our planet but also the very essence of the universe (166). However, most of the thinkers explored by Garreau in this chapter, do see possibilities for stopping the Hell scenario; mostly the steps are proscriptive, scientist limiting themselves as far as what they design, market forces balancing the risks and the rewards of a technology, and withholding information about a technology that could be used for devastating purposes (165). The thinkers presented in this chapter do not, in any way, share the optimism that the thinkers in the Heaven scenario shared, and though they believe that Hell can be avoided, some think that it is already too little too late.

And there are signs that this position is becoming validated given current trends in technological production, and loosening ethics on the global stage. For example as far back as 2002 it was discovered that “the technique used to create the first synthetic polio virus…could be also used to recreate Ebola or the 1918 flu strain that killed up to 40 million people” and that the process was relatively easy to accomplish (New Scientist, Westphal, n. pg.). The same researchers that discovered the process to replicate, synthetically, the Ebola virus thought that the ease with which it could be done “raise(d) fundamental questions about the wisdom of publishing the genomes of deadly pathogens on the internet” (Westphal). This was a fear that Joy expressed concern over(the I of GRIN), and it was not only the creation of a super virus, but also the information on its construction being readily accessible information.

Robert Freitas discusses the hypothetical reality behind the possibility of nanotechnology destroying all carbon based life forms, and creating the “gray goo” version of the world. Freitas speculates that the energy that a self replicating nanorobot would have to use could not be produced by either solar power or through the use of fossil fuels. Instead, Freitas believes, that nanobots would be designed to fuse energy from Carbon molecules, as a result, when the nanobots self replicate, they will have to continually mine different sources of carbon, mainly life forms. “Unlike almost any other natural material, biomass can serve both as a source of carbon and as a source of power for nanomachine replication. Ecophagic (gray goo creating) nanorobots would regard living things as environmental carbon accumulators, and biomass as a valuable ore to be mined for carbon and energy. Of course, biosystems from which all carbon has been extracted can no longer be alive but would instead become lifeless chemical sludge” (n. pg.). The end result of this biomass extraction would be a world in which all life would be replaced by self replicating nanorobots. Most people which see this end result, of uncontrollable nanotechnology, trust that mankind will either be quickly devoured by the machines at a atomic level, or mankind will slowly die of starvation and from massive pollution levels in the atmosphere.

However, it is the vast potential gap between people who have access to human enhancement technologies and those that do not, where many see the most readily, likely, and timely manifestation of the Hell scenario. The current gap between industrialized nations and non-industrialized nations and access to technology is already staggering. As the data models on Gapminder show the twenty seven richest countries in the world have nearly three time the number of internet users than do the rest of the world, and that in sub-Sahara Africa, in 2004, the average number of users was around 3 per 1,000 (the US was at 63/1000 as of 2004) (n. pg.). The trend also appears to be exponential, and as a result the countries on the low end of the scale will fall further and further back as the countries on high end will continue to out pass them. The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) has set up a special research group to look at the problem of a “technology gap”. In support of an already existing gap they site the following findings:

In Japan there are 861 patents granted per million people. In many developing countries the number is 0.

84% of articles published in scientific journals are from developed countries.

In 2002, only 10 countries accounted for 86% of world total investment in Research and Development (R&D)

The mean years of schooling in the United States is 12.1 years. In Guinea Bissau, it is less than one year.

In Finland, 27.3% of university enrollments are in science subjects. In Chad, this figure is 0.1%. (n. pg.)

For the UNCTAD the problem is that countries with out sufficient technologies will be unable to compete on a global level: “The ability of countries to acquire, master, adapt and improve upon scientific and technical knowledge is a major determinant of their capacity to achieve sustainable economic growth” (n. pg.).

Martin Rees, who foresaw the destruction of the cosmos, is not alone in his concern over the destruction of the earth and the universe due to a human created tear in space-time. Recently a lawsuit was filled in Hawaii against the newly constructed CERN particle accelerator in Europe. CERN is designed to increase the speed of atoms to, or near light speed, and then to smash them together in the hopes that they will send off particles that may have existed at the beginning of the universe. But, according to the New York Times, “Walter L. Wagner and Luis Sancho contend that scientists at the European Center for Nuclear Research, or CERN, have played down the chances that the collider could produce, among other horrors, a tiny black hole, which, they say, could eat the Earth. Or it could spit out something called a ‘strangelet’ that would convert our planet to a shrunken dense dead lump of something called ‘strange matter'” (n. pg.). Much in keeping with the thinking of Rees.

Though all of the possibilities for the destruction of mankind are slowly accumulating on the horizon it would take only the fruition of one of these catastrophes to lead man back into a world of utter chaos or into oblivion. If unchecked and unethical scientific research continues in the future at the levels it currently has, than there is little doubt that the very structure of life on Earth will be fundamentally and irrevocably altered toward extinction.

Freitas, Robert. “The Gray Goo Problem”. Kurzweilai.net. 20 March 2001 http://www.kurzweilai.net/meme/frame.html?main=/articles/art0142.html?.