It's April 2000. The Y2K bug ended up being a nonissue, but the dawn of the new millennium still brings with it a new set of sweeping questions about how humans will live with technology. Tech luminary Bill Joy, for one, has some serious concerns. He takes to the pages of WIRED to offer up a state of the unholy union between man and machine. In the coming years, he hypothesizes, robots may render people's jobs obsolete. Nanotechnology may lead to "knowledge-enabled mass destruction." In short, all of humankind's brilliant innovations could end up wiping the species off the face of the earth.
I'll be honest: I'm not someone who spends a lot of time worrying that machines will leave people in the dust, in another 20 years or ever. Ironically, Joy's 2000 story, Why the Future Doesn't Need Us, exemplifies a key reason why. The advent of new technologies has always fueled conversation about the future of humanity. Whether you're fearful, hopeful, or somewhere in between, what could be more human than prophesying where we're headed?
WIRED was created to cover what lies ahead, the so-called "country west of California called the future." In the beginning, techno-utopianism reigned supreme: "Change is good!" Today, we're more battle-hardened. Joy's predictions may not have come true (yet) but few would dispute that technologies often inflict tremendous harm. Still, it's always interesting and frequently useful to remember how the discourse has evolved, and how it's stayed consistent over time.
I'm excited to use the Classics newsletter to do exactly that. Each week, I'll bring you with me to a different corner of WIRED's extensive and wacky archive. I'll tell you what I find interesting, or strange, or troubling. I'm hopeful that you'll do the same in response.
With that in mind, do you think any part of Joy's thesis holds in 2023? What new concerns do you imagine he'd have if he were rewriting his magnum opus this spring? Maybe I should be more worried that a few years from now a GPT-3-enabled bot will be writing this newsletter instead of me … let me know what you think in the comments below the story.
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حبيبي ليس يعدله حبيب *** ولا لسواه في قلبي نصيب حبيب غاب عن بصري وسمعي *** ولكن في فؤادي ما يغيب يا حبيب ...
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