FRANCIS
Fukuyama, the American political scientist, strategist and philosopher,
is best known as the author of the seminal post-Cold War book, The
End of History and the Last Man. Jacques Attali, the French futurist
and founding president of the European Bank for Reconstruction and
Development, now heads PlaNet Finance in Paris. NPQ editor Nathan
Gardels asked both men to respond to the same set of questions about
Bill Joy’s thesis.
NPQ: Bill Joy,
the chief scientist at Sun Microsystems and one of the leading technologists
of the Internet revolution, has recently become alarmed that rapid
and combined advances in robotics, genetics and nanotech (micromachines)
could end up giving runaway technology the upper hand over the human
species. Joy questions whether "the future will need us," which seems
similar to the idea of a "post-human history." Are your images of
the future the same as Joy’s?
Francis Fukuyama: The
term "post-human" history for me really has to do with the question
of human nature. In this sense, biotechnology is in a different category
from nanotechnology and robotics. It will mean more fundamental changes
in the way we ourselves are rather than how changes in our external
environment may harm us.
A self-replicating robot
will not affect human nature in a way qualitatively different than
the way we are now affected by the threat of nuclear weapons.
In other words, the threats
Joy talks about are basically threats to the body—viruses, computer
or biological, robots that reproduce themselves and threaten human
control. That, of course, is something to take seriously.
But the challenge posed
by biotech—and by that I mean everything, including recombinant DNA,
that flows out of the human genome project—is an alteration on the
level of the soul. And these changes might be so subtle that it could
be a long time before we know what we’ve done to ourselves. Who knows
in advance what effect intervening in the complex interaction among
our vast array of genes will produce?
It may help to look at
the issue from an historical perspective. The period from the French
Revolution through the end of the Cold War saw the rise of different
doctrines that hoped to overcome the limits of human nature through
the creation of a new kind of human being, one that would not be subject
to the prejudices and limitations of the past.
The collapse of those
experiments by the end of the 20th century demonstrated the limits
of social engineering and endorsed, in my view, a liberal, market-based
order grounded in human nature. That is what I meant by "the end of
history" in the Hegelian-Marxist sense of the progressive evolution
of human political and economic institutions.
It could be, though, that
the tools of 20th century social engineering—from early childhood
socialization to psychoanalysis to agitprop and labor camps—were just
too crude to alter the natural substratum of human behavior.
In this century, however,
the open-ended character of the biotech and life sciences revolution
suggests we now may have the tools to accomplish what social engineers
failed to do in the past. Human nature would thus be transformed,
and we would be embarking on a new kind of history.
The question of "post-human
history" is far more fundamental than the concerns Joy addresses.
It has to do with the basic human repertoire of emotions, cognitive
capabilities and even longevity of life. This represents a vast scaling
up of the possibilities of technological manipulation that humanity
has heretofore not encountered.
Jacques Attali:
The discovery of new technologies is like the discovery of new continents:
We may one day approach a moment where the new world will take control
of the old one. Bill Joy’s question about whether the combined and
rapid advances in genetics, robotics and nanotechnology will lead
to their dominance over the human species is thus an appropriate one.
Queen Christina of Sweden
once challenged Descartes’ proposition that man is nothing more than
a machine by saying: " I never saw my clock making babies." But, in
the not too distant future, we will indeed witness the cloning of
robots as well as the cloning of men. And both have in common something
essential: the bypassing of sexuality.
In the end, it is this
artificial replication that unites the new technologies. Indeed, the
hate of sexuality is one of the main engines of technological progress.
The whole point is to obtain everything without human intervention,
by eliminating touch, direct contact, the human interface. Sexuality,
after all, is associated with death as the other name of life. To
self-replicate through cloning in the lab is to conquer death; the
self-replicating robot, many believe, can reach eternity.
Yet, we can not dispense
with sexuality if we are also going to transmit memory and conscience
to the person. It is sexuality that makes the individual.
As long as science is
unable to get beyond this obstacle, the danger of self-replicating
robots (which may well grow diverse through random mistakes in programming)
dominating the human species will be weak.
NPQ: Controversially,
Joy has said we must take seriously the terrorist Unabomber’s (Ted
Kaczynski) thesis that we are imperceptibly drifting into a dependence
on our machines to the point where they will control us instead of
vice-versa. He also finds merit in the Unabomber’s fear that the only
alternative scenario is the rise of new "elites" who will "domesticate"
the masses like animals in order to control the dangerous effects
of "knowledge-enabled" technologies available to everyone.
For Joy, this is the main
conundrum: The openness and democracy of our liberal societies that
gave rise to the information revolution in the first place will empower
small groups and extremists to employ "knowledge-enabled" technologies
in undemocratic, destructive ways. Simpler to use than deter, they
favor attack over defense.
Witness the "love bug,"
or before that the 15-year-old Canadian boy who disabled CNN-On Line
with a self-replicating virus sent from his bedroom desktop computer.
Or the still unknown hacker who shut down the supersecret US National
Security Agency for several days earlier this year.
How do we cope with this
conundrum of the liberal information age?
Fukuyama: There
can be no question that we are all really in trouble when technologies
are as easy to use and to own as they are dangerous. We were lucky
that nuclear weapons turned out to be very difficult to manufacture,
something only capable nation states have been able to do so far.
If a nuclear bomb could
be whipped up in the attic or basement, some nut would surely have
done it. So, if Joy is right about the dangerous capacities of "self-replicating,"
"knowledge-enabled" (and thus democratic and widely available) technologies,
then he is right to be worried.
Certainly, a biologically
engineered germ that could wipe out 10,000 people would cross a threshold
far beyond what we have been used to with small terrorist bomb blasts;
so would a computer virus that caused, say, the Social Security data
bank to be erased.
Joy’s thinking, though,
tends to make a straight line prediction about technology itself.
So far, the dastardly use of dangerous technologies turns out to be
limited in some way. People have been speculating about biological
weapons falling into the wrong hands for decades now. In theory, a
lot of damage can be done. In practice, biological agents are very
difficult to handle without contaminating those who want to use them
against others. This has slowed down their use for terrorism significantly.
Ultimately, the Aum Shinrikyo cult, which released sarin gas in the
Tokyo subway, was unsuccessful in doing the damage they intended.
Secondly, Joy abstracts
away the political institutions that will necessarily grow up as countermeasures
to anything as dangerous as he projects.
The real question, therefore,
is not a technological one, but a political-institutional one. What
is the likely interplay between those who want to control the likely
consequences of technology and those who will try to evade such controls?
Attali: The planetary
spread of computer viruses across the Internet demonstrates the fragilities
of networks. We are at the beginning of a new kind of war between
sedentarians and nomads. Sedentarians will use all means to kill real
and virtual travelers, as we saw in Philippines for kidnapped tourists
from Malaysia as well as for the "love bug" virus.
There will be more episodes
to come in a gigantic carnival of terrorists, some who will hide behind
the most beautiful ethics or values.
To counter this we need
an ethic of the new nomadic age of travel, both to monitor tourism
and to manage the travel of messages across the Net. But an ethic
means nothing without a police to control its implementation.
There will be no Network
age without adequate instruments at a world level. We need a world
police, and it cannot be only an American one, to control rogue states
or, mainly, rogue non-state groups and individuals who will be the
pirates along the new routes of the future.
The most surprising consequence
of new technologies is the need for a new, efficient world police.
If not, the new technologies will become the instruments of private
police. The real danger is not one Big Brother, but a host of smaller
private big brothers. In short, we have to urgently face the question
of a world government.
NPQ: If the democratic
access and use of a technology is so dangerous, is the only answer
for elites to control it?
Fukuyama: If any
technology is so dangerous that its possession by one crackpot can
cause massive damage, then there will likely be a democratic consensus
for control.
If not, one can only envision
the breakdown of society into a state of nature where people employ
horrible ways to survive and get back at each other. I don’t think
we are headed that way yet.
Attali: Yes. The
danger otherwise is that the control of technology is left to the
scientific experts or no one.
NPQ: One idea Joy
raises is "to relinquish the pursuit of knowledge and development
of those technologies so dangerous that we judge it better if they
are never available." Is that really viable?
Fukuyama: Now that
we’ve gotten on this technological escalator it is extremely difficult
to renounce science, beginning with the scientists themselves. In
my experience, any suggestion to scientists that society may have
broader purposes in wanting to slow down or stop technological progress
is usually met with a wall of incomprehension. Among scientists there
is a general assumption dating back to Francis Bacon that scientific
progress is for the better of all mankind.
Perhaps the time is coming,
thanks to arguments by scientists like Bill Joy, where that assumption
can be questioned in a serious way. Certainly, there is no prima facie
reason that more scientific progress is, automatically, always best.
Again, due to the specific character of nuclear weapons, we have managed
to slow down the proliferation process—at least keeping it in the
hands of nation states—through diplomatic and institutional means
as well as deterrent strategies that were designed for that purpose.
Attali: Nobody
will renounce science, but it will be possible to orient it for the
best of mankind. Why not create an equivalent to the Pugwash Conference
convened during the Cold War by scientists and public figures seeking
to avoid nuclear war? Similarly, the new movement would generate an
awareness about the perils and promises of the future of science.
Mankind has now the means
to commit species suicide. That deserves some attention. Yet, my fight
against nuclear proliferation has taught me that people are not in
the mood today to be worried by very long term threats. They are much
too focused on survival in the short term.
NPQ: If the motor
that drove "History" forward according to Hegel and Marx was the contradiction
between human freedom and necessity, perhaps the motor of "post-human
history" is the conflict between freedom and those technologies we’ve
created to overcome necessity, especially biotechnology? It will be
the struggle to realize the promise of the Genome Age, such as regenerative
medicine, while preserving dignity, individuality and freedom.
Fukuyama: Yes,
I think so. And the struggle will come in many forms. For example,
in democratic societies we accept a degree of inequality given to
us by nature. Our institutions thus tend to be based on merit and
equality of opportunity, not result, because we have assumed we must
deal with the biological set of cards we are dealt.
In the future, this may
no longer be a sound assumption because our biological makeup can
be reengineered. When that becomes a public issue, it will totally
reshape politics because such issues are so central to people’s moral
concerns. Certainly, this set of conflicts presented to us by modern
science will be the stuff of a new history.
Attali: The motor
of history will be the contradiction between selfishness, as embodied
in the quest for freedom and equality, and altruism, as embodied in
the quest for brotherhood.
As we enter the age of
networks people will have to care for others because everyone’s interests
and happiness will be linked to that of others.
Back
