From Films from the Future: The Technology and Morality of Sci-Fi Movies by Andrew Maynard
“You know what the computer did when he first
turned it on? It screamed.”
—Bree Evans
In 2005, the celebrated futurist Ray Kurzweil made a bold
prediction: In 2045, machines will be so smart that they’ll be capable
of reinventing ever-more-powerful versions of themselves, resulting
in a runaway acceleration in machine intelligence that far outstrips
what humans are capable of.[^120] Kurzweil called this the “singularity,”
a profound, disruptive, and rapid technological transformation of
the world we live in, marking the transition between a humandominated civilization and one dominated by smart machines.
To Kurzweil, artificial intelligence like that explored in chapter eight
and the movie Ex Machina is simply a stepping stone to the next
phase of human evolution. In his 2005 book The Singularity is Near,
he envisaged a future where deep convergence between different
areas of innovation begins to massively accelerate our technological
capabilities. His projections are based in part on an exponential
growth in technological progress that appears to be happening
across the board, such as in the plummeting cost and speed of
sequencing DNA, the continuing growth in computing power, and
massive increases in data storage density and the resolution of
non-invasive brain scans. They’re also based on the assumption
that these trends will not only continue, but accelerate. The result,
he claims, will be a transformative change in not only what we can
do with technology, but how increasingly advanced technologies
becomes deeply integrated into the future of life as we know it.[^121]
This, to Kurzweil, is the singularity. It’s a bright point in the nottoo-distant future, beyond which we cannot predict the outcomes
of our technological inventiveness, because they are so far beyond
our current understanding. And it’s the imagined events leading up
to and beyond such a technological transition point that the movie
Transcendence draws on.
To be honest, I must confess that I’m skeptical of such a
technological tipping point occurring in our near future. There’s
enough hand-waving and speculation here to make me deeply
suspicious of predictions of the pending singularity. What I do
buy into, though, is the idea of rapidly developing, converging,
and intertwining technologies leading to a technologically-driven
future that is increasingly hard to predict and control. And this
makes Transcendence, Hollywood hyped-up techno-fantasy aside,
a worthwhile starting point for imagining what could happen as we
begin to push the boundaries of the technologically possible beyond
our comprehension.
Transcendence revolves around Will Caster (played by Johnny
Depp), a visionary artificial-intelligence scientist at the University
of California, Berkeley, and his equally smart wife, Evelyn (Rebecca
Hall). The movie starts with Will presenting his work to a rapt
audience. With most of the room hanging on his every word, he
weaves a seductive narrative around the promise of AI solving the
world’s most pressing challenges.
Will’s lecture is one of unbounded optimism in the ingenuity of
humans and the power of AI. Yet, at the end of his presentation, one
member of the audience aggressively accuses him of trying to create
God. Will, it seems, is treading on sacred ground, and some people
are getting worried that he’s going too far. We quickly learn that
Will’s questioner is a member of an anti-technology activist group
calling itself Revolutionary Independence From Technology, or RIFT,
and his presence in the lecture is part of a coordinated attack on AI
researchers. As Will leaves the lecture, he’s shot and wounded by
this techno-activist. At the same time, a bomb goes off elsewhere,
In a mad dash to transcend his pending death, Will, Evelyn, and
their colleague and friend Max Waters (Paul Bettany) set up a secret
research lab. Here, they attempt to upload Will’s neural pathways
into a powerful AI-based supercomputer before his body gives way
and dies. As Will passes away, it looks like they’ve failed, until the
computer containing his mind-state begins to communicate.
It turns out that some part of Will has survived the transition, and
the resulting cyber-Will quickly begins to reconfigure the code and
algorithms that now define his environment. But members of RIFT,
worried about the consequences of what Will is doing, track down
the secret lab and plan a raid to put an end to what’s going on.
Even as they descend on the lab, though, Evelyn connects cyberWill to the web in an attempt to escape the activists, and he uploads
himself to the internet.
In the days and weeks that follow, cyber-Will and Evelyn establish
a powerful computing facility in the remote town of Brightwood.
This is financed using funds that cyber-Will, flexing his new cybermuscles, siphons off from the stock market. Armed with nearlimitless resources and an exponentially growing intelligence,
cyber-Will begins to make rapid and profound technological
breakthroughs, including harnessing a Hollywood version of
nanotechnology to create self-replicating “nanobots” that use the
materials around them to manufacture anything they are instructed
to, atom by atom.
In the meantime, members of RIFT kidnap Max and try to turn
him in their efforts to stop cyber-Will. Max, it turns out, previously
wrote a paper on the dangers of AI which has become something
of a guiding document for the techno-activists. Max initially resists
RIFT’s efforts, but he gradually begins to see that cyber-Will presents
a threat that has to be stopped. At the same time, another brilliant
AI scientist and former colleague of Will’s, Joseph Taggart (Morgan
Freeman), has teamed up with FBI Agent Buchanan (Cillian Murphy)
to track down cyber-Will and Evelyn. As cyber-Will’s powers grow,
Buchanan and Taggart join forces with Max and RIFT’s leader Bree
(Kate Mara) to take cyber-Will down.
in a lab where experiments are being conducted into uploading the
brain-states of monkeys into computers. Will survives the attack. But
the bullet that hits him is laced with radioactive polonium, leading
to irreversible and fatal poisoning.
This loose coalition of allies soon realize there is an increased
urgency to their mission. Using his growing intelligence, cyber-Will
has cracked not only how to create nanobots, but how to use them
to reconstruct precisely damaged tissues and cells, and to “upgrade”
living people. In a scene with rather God-like overtones, we see a
local resident who’s been blind from birth having their optic nerve
cells repaired, and being given the gift of sight.[^122] Cyber-Will starts
to cure and upgrade the local townspeople, but it turns out that his
altruistic “fix-it” health service also allows him to take control of
those he’s altered.
As cyber-Will extends his control over the local population, Max
and Taggart work out that they can bypass his defenses if he
can be persuaded to upgrade and assimilate someone carrying
a targeted cyber-virus. But there’s a catch. Because cyber-Will is
now distributed through the internet, taking him down will also
take down every web-enabled system around the world. Anything
that depends on the internet—finance, power, food distribution,
healthcare, and many other essential systems—would be disabled.
As a result, the anti-Will alliance faces a tough tradeoff: Allow cyberWill to grow in power and potentially take over the world, or shut
him down, and lose virtually every aspect of modern life that people
rely on.
The team decides to go for the nuclear option and shut cyber-Will
down. But they still need to work out how to deliver the virus.
Up to this point, Evelyn has been a willing partner in cyberWill’s growing empire. She’s not sure whether this is the Will she
previously knew, or some new entity masquerading as him, but she
sticks with him nevertheless. Yet, as cyber-Will’s power grows, Max
convinces Evelyn that this is not the Will she married. And the crux
of his argument is that, unlike cyber-Will, human-Will never wanted
to change the world. This was Evelyn’s vision, not his.
Evelyn becomes convinced that cyber-Will needs to be stopped, and
agrees to become a carrier for virus. To succeed, though, she needs
to persuade Will to assimilate her and make her a part of the cyber
world he’s creating.
Not surprisingly, cyber-Will knows what’s going on. But there’s
a twist. Everything he’s done has been motivated by his love for
Despite Will’s love for Evelyn, he’s not going to let himself be tricked
into being infected. Yet, as Evelyn approaches him, she’s fatally
wounded in an attack on the cyber facility, leaving cyber-Will with
an impossible choice: save Evelyn, but in doing so become infected,
or let her die, and lose the one thing he cares about the most.
Cyber-Will choses love and self-sacrifice over power, and as the
virus enters him, his systems begin to shut down. As it takes hold,
internet-connected systems around the world begin to fail.
At least, this is how it looks. What cyber-Will’s adversaries don’t
know is that he has transcended the rather clunky world of the
internet, and he’s taken a cyber-form of Evelyn with him. As he
assimilates her, he uploads them both into an invisible network
of cyber-connected nanobots. Together, they step beyond their
biological and evolutionary limits into a brave new future.
On one level, Transcendence takes us deep into technological
fantasyland. Yet the movie’s themes of technological convergence,
radical disruption, and anti-tech activism are all highly relevant to
the future we’re building and how it’s impacted by the technologies
we create.
According to World Economic Forum founder Klaus Schwab, we
are well into a “Fourth Industrial Revolution.”[^123] The first Industrial
Revolution, according to Schwab, was spurred by the use of water
power and steam to mechanize production. The second took off
with the widespread use of electricity. And the third was ushered
in with the digital revolution of the mid- to late twentieth century.
Now, argues Schwab, digital, biological, and physical technologies
are beginning to fuse together, to transform how and what we
manufacture and how we live our lives. And while this may sound
Evelyn. She wanted to change the world, and through his newfound
powers, cyber-Will found a way to do this for her. Using his
nanobots, he discovered ways to reverse the ravages of humans on
the environment, and take the planet back to a more pristine state.
a little Hollywood-esque, it’s worth remembering that the World
Economic Forum is a highly respected global organization that
works closely with many of the world’s top movers and shakers.
At the heart of this new Industrial Revolution is an increasing
convergence between technological capabilities that is blurring
the lines between biology, digital systems, and the physical and
mechanical world. Of course, technological convergence is nothing
new. Most of the technologies we rely on every day depend to some
degree on a fusion between different capabilities. Yet, over the past
two decades, there’s been a rapid acceleration in what is possible
that’s been driven by a powerful new wave of convergence.
Early indications of this new wave emerged in the 1970s as the
fields of computing and robotics began to intertwine. This was a nobrainer of a convergence, as it became increasingly easy to control
mechanical systems using computer “brains.” But it was a growing
trend in convergence between material science, genetics, and
neuroscience, and their confluence with cyber-systems and robotics,
that really began to accelerate the pace of change.
Some of this was captured in a 2003 report on converging
technologies co-edited by Mike Roco and Bill Bainbridge at the
US National Science Foundation.[^124] Working with leading scientists
and engineers, they explored how a number of trends were leading
to a “confluence of technologies that now offers the promise of
improving human lives in many ways, and the realignment of
traditional disciplinary boundaries that will be needed to realize this
potential.” And at this confluence they saw four trends as dominating
the field: nanotechnology, biotechnology, information technology,
and cognitive technology.
Roco, Bainbridge, and others argued that it’s at the intersections
between technologies that novel and disruptive things begin to
happen, especially when it occurs between technologies that allow
us to control the physical world (nanotechnology), biological
systems (biotechnology), the mind (cognitive technologies), and
cyberspace (specifically, information technologies). And they had
a point. Where these four technological domains come together,
really interesting things start to happen. For instance, scientists
and technologists can begin to use nanotechnology to build more
These confluences just begin to hint at the potential embedded
within the current wave of technological convergence. What Roco
and Bainbridge revealed is that we’re facing a step-change in how
we use science and technology to alter the world around us. But
their focus on nano, bio, info, and cognitive technologies only
scratched the surface of the transformative changes that are now
beginning to emerge.
To understand why we’re at such a transformative point in our
technological history, it’s worth pausing to look at how our
technological skills are growing in how we work with the most
fundamental and basic building blocks of the things we make and
use; starting with digital systems, and extending out to the materials
and products we use and the biological systems we work with.
The advent of digital technologies and modern computers brought
about a major change in what we can achieve, and it’s one that we’re
only just beginning to fully appreciate the significance of. Of course,
it’s easy to chart the more obvious impacts of the digital revolution
on our lives, including the widespread use of smart phones and
social media. But there’s an underlying trend that far exceeds many
of the more obvious benefits of digital devices and systems, and this,
as we saw in chapter seven and Ghost in the Shell, is the creation
of a completely new dimension that we are now operating in:
cyberspace.
Cyberspace is a domain where, through the code we write, we have
control over the most fundamental rules and instructions that govern
it. We may not always be able to determine or understand the full
implications of what we do, but we have the power to write and edit
the code that ultimately defines everything that happens here.
The code that most cyber-systems currently rely on is made up of
basic building blocks of digital computing, the ones and zeroes
of binary, and the bits and bytes that they’re a part of. Working
powerful computers, or to read DNA sequences faster, or build
better machine-brain interfaces. Information technology can be used
to design new materials, or to engineer novel genetic sequences and
interpret brain signals. Biotechnology can be, and is being, used to
make new materials, to translate digital code into genetic code, and
to precisely control neurons. And neurotechnology is inspiring a
whole new generation of computer processors.
with these provides startling insight into what we might achieve if
we could, in a similar way, write and edit the code that underlies
the physical world we inhabit. And this is precisely what we
are beginning to do with biological systems, although, as we’re
discovering, coding biology using DNA is fiendishly complicated.
Unlike the world of cyber, we had no say in designing the
underlying code of biology, and as a result we’re having to work
hard to understand it. Here, rather than ones and zeroes of digital
code, the fundamental building blocks are the four bases that make
up DNA: adenine, guanine, cytosine, and thymine. This language of
DNA is deeply complex, and we’re still a long way from being close
to mastering it. But the more we learn, the closer we’re getting to
being able to design and engineer biological systems with the same
degree of finesse we can achieve in cyberspace.
Thinking about coding biology in the same way we code apps and
other cyber-systems is somewhat intuitive. There is, however, a
third domain where we are effectively learning to rewrite the “base
code,” and this is the physical world of materials and machines.
Here, the equivalent fundamental building blocks—the base
code—are the atoms and molecules that everything is made of.
Just as we’ve experienced a revolution in our understanding of
biology over the past century, we’ve also seen a parallel revolution
in understanding how the arrangement and types of atoms and
molecules in materials determines their behavior. These are the
physical world’s equivalent of the “bits” of cyber code, and the
“bases” of biological code, and, with our emerging mastery of this
base code of atoms and molecules, we’re transforming how we can
design and engineer the material world around us. Naturally, as
with DNA, we’re still constrained by the laws of physics as we work
with atoms and molecules. We cannot create materials that defy the
laws of the nature, for instance, or that take on magical properties.
But we can start to design and create materials, and even machines,
that go far beyond what has previously occurred through natural
processes alone.
Here, our growing mastery of the base code in each of these three
domains is transforming how we design and mold the world around
us. And it’s this that is making the current technological revolution
look and feel very different from anything that’s come before it. But
we’re also learning how to cross-code between these base codes, to
mix and match what we do with bits, bases, and atoms to generate
new technological capabilities. And it’s this convergence that is
radically transforming our emerging technological capabilities.
Endy wasn’t the first to coin the term synthetic biology.[^126] But he
was one of the first to introduce ideas to biological design like
standardized parts, modularization, and “black-boxing” (essentially
designing biological modules where a designer doesn’t need to
know how a module works, just what it does). And in doing so,
he helped establish an ongoing trend in applying non-biological
thinking to biology.
This convergence between biology and engineering is already
leading to a growing library of “bio bricks,” or standardized
biological components that, just like Lego bricks or electronic
components, can be used to build increasingly complex biological
“circuits” and devices. The power of bio bricks is that engineers can
systematically build biological systems that are designed to carry out
specific functions without necessarily understanding the intricacies
of the underlying biology. It’s a bit like being able to create the
Millennium Falcon out of Legos without needing to understand the
chemistry behind the individual bricks, or successfully constructing
your own computer with no knowledge of the underlying solid-state
physics. In the same way, scientists and engineers are using bio
bricks to build organisms that are capable of producing powerful
medicines, or signaling the presence of toxins, or even transforming
pollutants into useful substances.
Perhaps not surprisingly given its audacity, Endy’s vision of synthetic
biology isn’t universally accepted, and there are many scientists
who still feel that biology is simply too complex to be treated like
Legos or electronic components. Despite this, the ideas of Drew
To get a sense of just how powerful this idea of “cross-coding” is,
it’s worth taking a look at what is often referred to as “synthetic
biology”—a technology trend we touched on briefly in chapter
two and Jurassic Park. In 2005, the scientist and engineer Drew
Endy posed a seemingly simple question: Why can’t we design and
engineer biological systems using DNA coding in the same way
we design and engineer electronic devices?[^125] His thinking was
that, complex as biology is, if we could break it down into more
manageable components and modules, like electrical, computer, and
mechanical engineers do with their systems, we could transform
how “biological” products are designed and engineered.
Endy and others are already transforming how biological systems
and organisms are being designed. To get a flavor of this, you need
look no further than the annual International Genetically Engineered
Machine competition, or iGEM for short.[^127]
Every year, teams from around the world compete in iGEM, many
of them made up of undergraduates and high school students
with very diverse backgrounds and interests. Many of these teams
produce genetically modified organisms that are designed to behave
in specific ways, all using biological circuits built with bio-bricks. In
2016, for instance, winning teams modified E. coli bacteria to detect
toxins in Chinese medicine, engineered a bacterium to selectively
kill a parasitic mite that kills bees, and altered a bacterium to
indicate the freshness of fruit by changing color. These, and many of
the other competition entries, provide sometimes-startling insights
into what can be achieved when innovative teams of people start
treating biology as just another branch of engineering. But they
also reflect how cross-coding between biology and cyberspace is
changing our very expectations of what’s possible when working
with biology.
To better understand this, it’s necessary to go back to the idea of
DNA being part of the base code of all living things. As a species,
we’ve been coding in this base code for thousands of years,
albeit crudely, through selective breeding. More recently, we’ve
learned how to alter this code through brute force, by physically
bombarding cells with edited strands of DNA, or designing viruses
that can deliver a payload of modified genetic material. But, until
just a few years ago, this biological coding was largely limited to
working directly with physical materials. Yet, as the cost and ease of
DNA sequencing has plummeted, all of this has changed. Scientists
can now quickly and (relatively) cheaply read the DNA base code
of complete organisms and upload them to cyberspace. Once
there, they can start to redesign and experiment with this code,
manipulating it in much in the same way as we’ve learned how to
work with digitized photos and video.
This is a big deal, as it allows scientists and engineers to experiment
with and redesign DNA-based code in ways that were impossible
until quite recently. As well as tweaking or redesigning existing
organisms, this is allowing them to discover how to make DNA
In the past few years, it’s become increasingly easy to synthesize
sequences of DNA from computer-based code. You can even mailorder vials of DNA that have been constructed to your precise
specifications, and have them delivered to your home or lab in a
matter of days. In other words, scientists, engineers, and, in fact,
pretty much anyone who puts their mind to it can upload genetic
code into cyberspace, digitally alter it, then download it into back
into the physical world, and into real, living organisms. This is all
possible because of our growing ability to cross-code between
biology and cyberspace.
It doesn’t take much imagination to see what a step-change in our
technological capabilities cross-coding like this may bring about.
And it’s not confined to biology and computers; cross-coding is also
happening between biology and materials, between materials and
cyberspace, and at the nexus of all three domains. This is powerful
and transformative science and technology. Yet with this emerging
mastery of the world we live in, there’s perhaps a greater likelihood
than ever of us making serious and irreversible mistakes. And this
is where technological convergence comes hand in hand with an
urgent need to understand and navigate the potential impacts of our
newfound capabilities, before it’s too late.
On January 15, 1813, fourteen men were hanged outside York Castle
in England for crimes associated with technological activism. It was
the largest number of people ever hanged in a single day at the
castle.
These hangings were a decisive move against an uprising protesting
the impacts of increased mechanization, one that became known as
the Luddite movement after its alleged leader, Ned Ludd.
It’s still unclear whether Ned Ludd was a real person, or a
conveniently manufactured figurehead. Either way, the Luddite
movement of early-nineteenth-century England was real, and it was
bloody. England in the late 1700s and early 1800s was undergoing
behave in ways that have never previously occurred in nature. It’s
even opening the door to training AI-based systems how to code
using DNA. But this is only half of the story. The other half comes
with the increasing ability of scientists to not only read DNA
sequences into cyberspace, but to write modified genetic code back
into the real world.
a scientific and technological transformation. At the tail end of the
Age of Enlightenment, entrepreneurs were beginning to combine
technologies in powerful new ways to transform how energy was
harnessed, how new materials were made, how products were
manufactured, and how goods were transported. Much like today, it
was a time of dramatic technological and social change. The ability
to use new knowledge and to exploit materials in new ways was
increasing at breakneck speed. And those surfing the wave found
themselves on an exhilarating ride into the future.
But there were casualties, not least among those who began to see
their skills superseded and their livelihoods trashed in the name
of progress.
In the 1800s, one of the more prominent industries in the English
Midlands was using knitting frames to make garments and cloth out
of wool and cotton. Using these manual machines was a sustaining
business for tens of thousands of people. It didn’t make them rich,
but it was a living. By some accounts, there were around 30,000
knitting frames in England at the turn of the century—25,000 of
them in the Midlands—serving the cloth and clothing needs of
the country.
As the first Industrial Revolution gathered steam, though, mass
production began to push out these manual-labor-intensive
professions, and knitting frames were increasingly displaced by
steam-powered industrial mills. Faced with poverty, and in a fight
for their livelihoods, a growing number of workers turned to direct
action and began smashing the machines that were replacing them.
From historical records, they weren’t opposed to the technology so
much as how it was being used to profit others at their expense.
The earliest records of machine smashing began in 1811, but
escalated rapidly as the threat of industrialization loomed. In
response, the British government passed the “Destruction of
Stocking Frames, etc. Act 1812” (also known as the Frame Breaking
Act), which allowed for those found guilty of breaking stocking or
lace frames to face transportation to remote colonies, or even the
death penalty.
Galvanized by the Act, the Luddite movement escalated, culminating
in the murder of mill owner William Horsfall in 1812, and the
hanging of seventeen Luddites and transportation of seven
more. It marked a turning point in the conflict between Luddites
and industrialization, and by 1816 the movement had largely
Back in 2009, I asked a number of friends and colleagues working
in civil-society organizations to contribute to a series of articles for
the blog 2020 Science.[^128] I was very familiar with the sometimes
critical stances that some of these colleagues took on advances in
science and technology, and I wanted to get a better understanding
of how they saw the emerging relationship between society
and innovation.
One of my contributors was Jim Thomas, from the environmental
action group ETC. I’d known Jim for some time, and was familiar
with the highly critical position he sometimes took on emerging
technologies, and I was intrigued to know more about what drove
him and some of his group’s members.
Jim’s piece started out, quite cleverly, I thought, with, “I should
admit right now that I’m a big fan of the Luddites.”[^129] He went
on to describe a movement that was inspired, not by a distrust of
technology, but by a desire to maintain fair working conditions.
Jim’s article provides a nuanced perspective on Luddism that is often
lost as accusations of being a Luddite (or neo-Luddite) are thrown
around. And it’s one that, I must confess, I have rather a soft spot
for. So much so that, when Elon Musk, Bill Gates, and Stephen
Hawking were nominated for the annual Luddite award, I countered
with an article titled “If Elon Musk is a Luddite, count me in!”[^130]
dissipated. Yet the name Luddite lives on as an epithet thrown at
people who seemingly stand in the way of technological progress,
including those who dare to ask if we are marching blindly into
technological risks that, with some forethought, could be avoided.
These, according to the narratives that emerge around technological
innovation, are the new Luddites, or “neo-Luddites.” This is usually a
term of derision and censorship that has a tendency to be attached
to individuals and groups who appear to oppose technological
progress. Yet the history of the Luddite movement suggests that the
term carries with it a lot more nuance than is sometimes apparent.
Despite the actions and the violence that were associated with their
movement (on both sides), the Luddites were not fighting against
technology, but against its socially discriminatory and unjust use.
These were people who had embraced a previous technology that
not only gave them a living, but also provided their peers with an
important commodity. They were understandably upset when, in the
name of progress, wealthy industrialists started to take away their
livelihood to line their own pockets.
The Luddites fought hard for their jobs and their way of life. More
than this, though, the movement forced a public dialogue around
the broader social risks of indiscriminate technological innovation
and, in the process, got people thinking about what it meant to be
socially responsible as new technologies were developed and used.
Ultimately, the movement failed. As society embraced technological
change, the way was paved for major advances in manufacturing
capabilities. Yet, as the Luddite movement foreshadowed, there were
casualties on the way, often among communities who didn’t have
the political or social agency to resist being used and abused. And,
as was seen in chapter six and the movie Elysium, we’re still seeing
these casualties, as new technologies drive a wedge between those
who benefit from them and those who suffer as a consequence
of them.
These wedges are often complex. For instance, the gig economy
that’s emerging around companies like Uber, Lyft, and Airbnb
is enabling people to make more money in new ways, but it’s
also leading to discrimination and worker abuse in some cases,
as well as elevating the stress of job insecurity. A whole raft of
innovations, from advanced manufacturing to artificial intelligence,
are threatening to completely redraw the job landscape. These
and other advances present real and serious threats to people’s
livelihoods. In many cases, they also threaten deeply held beliefs
and worldviews, and force people to confront a future where they
feel less comfortable and more vulnerable. As a result, there is, in
some quarters, a palpable backlash against technological innovation,
as people protect what’s important to them. Many of these people
would probably not consider themselves Luddites. But I suspect
plenty of them would be sympathetic to smashing the machines and
the technologies that they feel threaten them.
This anti-technology sentiment seems to be gaining ground in
some areas, and it’s easy to see why someone who’s unaware of
Between 1978 and 1995, three people were killed and twenty-three
others injured in terrorist attacks by one of the most extreme antitechnology activists of modern times. Ted Kaczynski—also known
as the Unabomber131—conducted a reign of terror through targeting
academics and airlines with home-made bombs, until his arrest
in 1996. His issue? He fervently believed that we’ve lost our way
as a society with our increasing reliance on, and subservience to,
technology.
Watch or read enough science fiction, and you’d be forgiven for
thinking that techno-terrorism is a major threat in today’s society,
and that groups like Transcendence’s RIFT are an increasingly likely
phenomenon. Despite this, though, it’s remarkably hard to find
evidence for widespread techno-terrorism in real life. Yet, dig deep
enough, and small but worrying pockets of violent resistance against
technological progress do begin to surface, often closely allied to
techno-terrorism’s close cousin, eco-terrorism.
In 2002, James F. Jarboe, then Domestic Terrorism Section Chief
of the FBI’s Counterterrorism Division, testified before a House
subcommittee on the emerging threats of eco-terrorism.[^132] In his
testimony, he identified the Animal Liberation Front (ALF) and Earth
Liberation Front (ELF) as serious terrorist threats, and claimed they
were responsible at the time for “more than 600 criminal acts in the
the roots of the Luddite movement might derisively brand people
who represent it as neo-Luddites. Yet this is a misplaced branding,
as the true legacy of Ned Ludd’s movement is not about rejecting
technology, but ensuring that new technologies are developed
for the benefit of all, not just a privileged few. This is a narrative
that Transcendence explores through the tension between Will’s
accelerating technological control and RIFT’s social activism,
one that echoes aspects of the Luddite movement. But there are
also differences between this tale of technological resistance and
the events from two hundred years ago that inspired it, that are
reminiscent of more recent concerns around direct action, and
techno-terrorism in particular.
United States since 1996, resulting in damages in excess of fortythree million dollars.” But no deaths.
Jarboe’s testimony traces the recent history of eco-terrorism back
to the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, a disaffected faction
of the environmental activist group Greenpeace that formed in
the 1970s. Then, in the 1980s, a new direct-action group, Earth
First, came to prominence, spurred by Rachel Carson’s 1962 book
Silent Spring and a growing disaffection with ineffective protests
against the ravages of industrialization. Earth First were known
for their unpleasant habit of inserting metal or ceramic spikes into
trees scheduled to be cut for lumber, leaving a rather nasty, and
potentially fatal, surprise for those felling or milling them. In the
1990s, members of Earth First formed the group ELF and switched
tactics to destroying property using timed incendiary devices.[^133]
Groups such as ELF and Earth First, together with their underlying
concerns over the potentially harmful impacts of technological
innovation, clearly provide some of the inspiration for RIFT.
Yet, beyond the activities of these two groups, which have been
predominantly aimed at combatting environmental harm rather than
resisting technological change, it’s surprisingly hard to find examples
of substantial and coordinated techno-terrorism. Today’s Luddites, it
seems, are more comfortable breaking metaphorical machines from
the safety of their academic ivory towers rather than wreaking havoc
in the real world. Yet there are still a small number of individuals
and groups who are motivated to harm others in their fight against
emerging technologies and the risks they believe they represent.
On August 8, 2011, Armando Herrera Corral, a computer scientist
at the Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education in
Mexico City, received an unusual package. Being slightly wary of it,
he asked his colleague Alejandro Aceves López to help him open it.
In opening the package, Aceves set off an enclosed pipe bomb, and
metal shards ejected by the device pierced his chest. He survived,
but had to be rushed to intensive care. Herrera got away with burns
to his legs and two burst eardrums.
ITS justified its actions through a series of communiques, the final
one being released in March 2014, following an article on the
group’s activities published by the scholar Chris Toumey.[^136] Reading
the communique they released the day after the August 8 bombing,
what emerges is a distorted vision of nanotechnology that, to them,
justified short-term violence to steer society away from imagined
existential risks. At the heart of these concerns was their fear of
nanotechnologies creating “nanomachines” that would end up
destroying the Earth.
ITS’ “nanomachines” are remarkably similar to the nanobots seen
in Transcendence. Just to be clear, these do not present a plausible
or rational risk, as we’ll get to shortly. Yet it’s easy to see how these
activists twisted together the speculative musings of scientists, along
with a fractured understanding of reality, to justify their deeply
misguided actions.
In articulating their concerns, ITS drew on a highly influential
essay, published in Wired magazine in 2000, by Sun Microsystems
founder Bill Joy. Joy’s article was published under the title “Why the
future doesn’t need us,”[^137] and in it he explores his worries that the
technological capabilities being developed at the time were on the
cusp of getting seriously out of hand—including his concerns over a
hypothetical “gray goo” of out-of-control nanobots first suggested by
futurist and engineer Eric Drexler.
Joy’s concerns clearly resonated with ITC, and somehow, in the
minds of the activists, these concerns translated into an imperative
to carry out direct action against nanotechnologists in an attempt
The package was from a self-styled techno-terrorist group calling
itself Individuals Tending Towards the Wild, or Individuals Tending
toward Savagery (ITS), depending on how the Spanish is translated.[^134]
ITS had set its sights on combating advances in nanotechnology
through direct and violent action, and was responsible for two
previous bombing attempts, both in Mexico.[^135]
to save future generations. This was somewhat ironic, given Joy’s
clear abhorrence of violent action against technologists. Yet, despite
this, Joy’s speculation over the specter of “gray goo” was part of the
inspiration behind ITC’s actions.
Beyond gray goo though, there exists another intriguing connection
between Joy and ITC. In his essay, Joy cited a passage from Ray
Kurzweil’s book The Age of Spiritual Machines that troubled him,
and it’s worth reproducing part of that passage here:
“First let us postulate that the computer scientists succeed in
developing intelligent machines that can do all things better
than human beings can do them. In that case presumably
all work will be done by vast, highly organized systems of
machines and no human effort will be necessary. Either of two
cases might occur. The machines might be permitted to make all
of their own decisions without human oversight, or else human
control over the machines might be retained.
“If the machines are permitted to make all their own decisions,
we can’t make any conjectures as to the results, because it is
impossible to guess how such machines might behave. We
only point out that the fate of the human race would be at the
mercy of the machines. It might be argued that the human race
would never be foolish enough to hand over all the power to
the machines. But we are suggesting neither that the human
race would voluntarily turn power over to the machines nor that
the machines would willfully seize power. What we do suggest
is that the human race might easily permit itself to drift into
a position of such dependence on the machines that it would
have no practical choice but to accept all of the machines’
decisions. As society and the problems that face it become
more and more complex and machines become more and
more intelligent, people will let machines make more of their
decisions for them, simply because machine-made decisions will
bring better results than manmade ones. Eventually a stage may
be reached at which the decisions necessary to keep the system
running will be so complex that human beings will be incapable
of making them intelligently. At that stage the machines will
be in effective control. People won’t be able to just turn the
machines off, because they will be so dependent on them that
turning them off would amount to suicide.”
Joy was conflicted. As he writes, “Kaczynski’s actions were
murderous and, in my view, criminally insane. …But simply
saying this does not dismiss his argument; as difficult as it is for
me to acknowledge, I saw some merit in the reasoning in this
single passage.”
Joy worked through his concerns with reason and humility, carving
out a message that innovation can be positively transformative, but
only if we handle the power of emerging technologies with great
respect and responsibility. Yet ITS took his words out of context, and
saw his begrudging respect for Kaczynski’s arguments as validation
of their own ideas.
The passage above that was cited by Kurzweil, and then by Joy,
comes from Kaczynski’s thirty-five-thousand-word manifesto[^138],
published in 1995 by the Washington Post and the New York Times.
Since its publication, this manifesto has become an intriguing
touchstone for action against perceived irresponsible (and
permissionless) technology innovation. Some of its messages have
resonated deeply with technologists like Kurzweil, Joy, and others,
and have led to deep introspection around what socially responsible
technology innovation means. Others—notably groups like ITS—
have used it to justify more direct action to curb what they see as
the spread of a technological blight on humanity. And a surprising
number of scholars have tried to tease out socially relevant insights
on technology and its place within society from the manifesto.
The result is an essay that some people find easy to read selectively,
cherry-picking the passages that confirm their own beliefs and
ideas, while conveniently ignoring others. Yet, taken as a whole,
Kaczynski’s manifesto is a poorly-informed rant against what
he refers to pejoratively as “leftists,” and a naïve justification for
reverting to a more primitive society where individuals had what he
believed was more agency over how they lived, even if this meant
living in poverty and disease.
Kurzweil’s passage shifted Joy’s focus of concern onto artificial
intelligence and intelligent machines. This was something that
resonated deeply with him. But, to his consternation, he discovered
that this passage was not, in fact, written by Kurzweil, but by the
Unabomber, and was merely quoted by Kurzweil.
Fortunately, despite Kaczynski, ITS, and fictitious groups like
RIFT, violent anti-technology activism in the real world continues
to be relatively rare. Yet the underlying concerns and ideologies
are not. Here, Bill Joy’s article in Wired provides a sobering
nexus between the futurist imaginings of Kurzweil and Drexler,
Kaczynski’s anti-technology-motivated murders, and the bombings
of ITS. Each of these are worlds apart in how they respond to new
technologies. But the underlying visions, fears, and motivations are
surprisingly similar.
In today’s world, most activists working toward more measured
and responsible approaches to technology innovation operate
within social norms and through established institutions. Indeed,
there is a large and growing community of scholars, entrepreneurs,
advocates, and even policy makers, who are sufficiently concerned
about the future impacts of technological innovation that they
are actively working within appropriate channels to bring about
change. Included here are cross-cutting initiatives like the Future
of Life Institute, which, as was discussed in chapter eight, worked
with experts from around the world to formulate the 2017 set of
principles for beneficial AI development. There are many other
examples of respected groups—as well as more shadowy and
anarchic ones, like the “hacktivist” organization Anonymous—that
are asking tough questions about the line between what we can
do, and what we should be doing, to ensure new technologies are
developed safely and responsibly. Yet the divide between legitimate
action and illegitimate action is not always easy to discern,
especially if the perceived future impacts of powerful technologies
could possibly lead to hundreds of millions of people being harmed
or killed. At what point do the stakes become so high around
powerful technologies that violent means justify the ends?
Here, Transcendence treads an intriguing path, as it leads viewers
on a journey from reacting to RIFT with abhorrence, to begrudging
acceptance. As cyber-Will’s powers grow, we’re sucked into RIFT’s
perspective that the risk to humanity is so great that only violent
and direct action can stop it. And so, Bree and her followers pivot in
the movie from being antagonists to heroes.
This is a seductive narrative. If, by allowing a specific technology
to emerge, we would be condemning millions to die, and many
more to be subjugated, how far would you go to stop it? I suspect
that a surprising number of people would harbor ideas of carrying
out seemingly unethical acts in the short term for the good of
In 1965, Gordon Moore, one of Intel’s founders, observed that the
number of transistors being squeezed into integrated circuits was
doubling around every two years. He went on to predict—with some
accuracy—that this trend would continue for the next decade.
As it turned out, what came to be known as Moore’s Law continued
way past the 1970s, and is still going strong (although there are
indications that it may be beginning to falter). It was an early
example of exponential extrapolation being used to predict how the
future of a technology would evolve, and it’s one of the most oftcited case of exponential growth in technology innovation.
In contrast to linear growth, where outputs and capabilities increase
by a constant amount each year, exponential growth leads to them
multiplying rapidly. For instance, if a company produced a constant
one hundred widgets a year, after five years, it would have produced
five hundred widgets. But if it increased production exponentially,
by a hundred times each year, after five years, it would have
produced a hundred million widgets. In this way, exponential
trends can lead to massive advances over short periods of time. But
because they involve such large numbers, predictions of exponential
growth are dangerously sensitive to the assumptions that underlie
them. Yet, they are extremely beguiling when it comes to predicting
future technological breakthroughs.
Moore’s Law, it has to be said, has weathered the test of time
remarkably well, even when data that predates Moore is taken into
account. In the supporting material for his book The Singularity
is Near, Ray Kurzweil plotted out the calculations per second per
$1,000 of computing hardware—a convenient proxy for computer
power—extrapolating back to some of the earliest (non-digital)
computing engines of the early 1900s.[^139] Between 1900 and
1998, he showed a relatively consistent exponential increase in
calculations per second per $1,000, representing a twenty-trilliontimes increase in computing power over this period. Based on these
data, Kurzweil projected that it will be only a short time before we
future generations (and indeed, this is a topic we’ll come back to in
chapter eleven and the movie Inferno). But there’s a fatal flaw in this
way of thinking, and that’s the assumption that we can predict with
confidence what the future will bring.
are able to fully simulate the human brain using computers and
create superintelligent computers that will far surpass humans in
their capabilities. Yet, these predictions are misleading, because they
fall into the trap of assuming that past exponential growth predicts
similar growth rates in the future.
One major issue with extrapolating exponential growth into the
future is that it massively amplifies uncertainties in the data. Because
each small step in the future extrapolation involves incredibly large
numbers, it’s easy to be off by a factor of thousands or millions in
predictions. These may just look like small variations on plots like
those produced by Kurzweil and others, but in real life, they can
mean the difference between something happening in our lifetime
or a thousand years from now.
There is another, equally important risk in extrapolating exponential
trends, and it’s the harsh reality that exponential relationships never
go on forever. As compelling as they look on a computer screen
or the page of a book, such trends always come to an end at some
point, as some combination of factors interrupts them. If these
factors lie somewhere in the future, it’s incredibly hard to work out
where they will occur, and what their effects will be.
Of course, Moore’s Law seems to defy these limitations. It’s been
going strong for decades, and even though people have been
predicting for years that we’re about to reach its limit, it’s still
holding true. But there is a problem with this perspective. Moore’s
Law isn’t really a law, so much as a guide. Many years ago, the
semiconductor industry got together and decided to develop an
industry roadmap to guide the continuing growth of computing
power. They used Moore’s Law for this roadmap, and committed
themselves to investing in research and development that would
keep progress on track with Moore’s predictions.
What is impressive is that this strategy has worked. Moore’s Law
has become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Yet for the past sixty-plus
years, this progress has relied extensively on the same underlying
transistor technology, with the biggest advances involving making
smaller components and removing heat from them more efficiently.
Unfortunately, you can only make transistors so small before you hit
fundamental physical limits.
Because of this, Moore’s Law is beginning to run into difficulties.
What we don’t know is whether an alternative technology will
emerge that keeps the current trend in increasing computing power
Not surprisingly, perhaps, there are those who believe that new
technologies will keep the exponential growth in computing
power going to the point that processing power alone matches
that of the human brain. But exponential growth sadly never lasts.
To illustrate this, imagine a simple thought experiment involving
bacteria multiplying in a laboratory petri dish. Assume that, initially,
these bacteria divide and multiply every twenty minutes. If we
start with one bacterium, we’d have two after twenty minutes, four
after forty minutes, eight after an hour, and so on. Based on this
trend, if you asked someone to estimate how many bacteria you’d
have after a week, there’s a chance they’d do the math and tell
you you’d have five times ten to the power of 151 of them—that’s
five with 151 zeroes after it. This, after all, is what the exponential
growth predicts.
That’s a lot of bacteria. In fact, it’s an impossible amount; this many
bacteria would weigh many, many times more than the mass of the
entire universe. The prediction may be mathematically reasonable,
but it’s practically nonsensical. Why? Because, in a system with
limited resources and competing interests, something’s got to give at
some point.
In the case of the bacteria, their growth is limited by the size of the
dish they’re contained in, the amount of nutrients available, how a
growing population changes the conditions for growth, and many
other factors. The bacteria cannot outgrow their resources, and as
they reach their limits, the growth rate slows or, in extreme cases,
may even crash.
We find the same pattern of rapid growth followed by a tail-off (or
crash) in pretty much any system that, at some point, seems to show
exponential growth. The exponential bit is inevitably present for a
limited period of time only. And while exponential growth may go
on longer than expected, once you leave the realm of hard data, you
really are living on the edge of reality.
The upshot of this is that, while Kurzweil’s singularity may one
day become a reality, there’s a high chance that unforeseen events
are going to interfere with his exponential predictions, either
going. But, at the moment, it looks like we may be about to take
a bit of a breather from the past few decades’ growth. In other
words, the exponential trend of the past probably won’t be great at
predicting advances over the next decade or so.
scuppering the chances of something transformative happening, or
pushing it back hundreds or even thousands of years.
And this is the problem with the technologies we see emerging
in Transcendence. It’s not that they are necessarily impossible
(although some of them are, as they play fast and loose with what
are, as far as we know, immutable laws of physics). It’s that they
depend on exponential extrapolation that ignores the problems
of error amplification and resource constraints. This is a mere
inconvenience when it comes to science-fiction plot narratives—
why let reality get in the way of a good story? But it becomes
more serious when real-world decisions and actions are based on
similar speculation.
In 2003, Britain’s Prince Charles made headlines by expressing his
concerns about the dangers of gray goo.[^140] Like Bill Joy, he’d become
caught up in Eric Drexler’s idea of self-replicating nanobots that
could end up destroying everything in their attempt to replicate
themselves. Prince Charles later backtracked, but not until after his
concerns had led to the UK’s Royal Society and Royal Academy of
Engineering launching a far-reaching study on the implications of
nanotechnology.[^141]
The popular image of nanobots as miniaturized, fully autonomous
robots is one of the zombies of the nanotechnology world. It’s an
image that just won’t die, despite having barely a thread of scientific
plausibility behind it. There’s something about the term “nanobot”
that journalists cannot resist using, and that university press offices
seem incapable of resisting in their attempts to make nanoscale
research seem sexy and futuristic. Even as I write this, a quick
Google search returns three pages of news articles mentioning
“nanobots” in the last month alone. Yet, despite the popular image’s
appeal, there is a world of difference between the technology seen
in Transcendence and what’s happening in labs now.
As an early popularizer of nanobots, Eric Drexler was inspired
by the biological world and the way in which organisms have
evolved to efficiently manufacture everything they need from the
atoms and molecules around them. To Drexler, many biological
molecules are simply highly efficient molecular machines that strip
materials apart atom by atom and reassemble them into ever more
complex structures. In many ways, he saw these as analogous to the
machines that humans had developed over the centuries—wheels,
cogs, engines, and even simple robots—but at a much, much smaller
scale. And he speculated that, once we have full mastery over how
to precisely build materials atom by atom, we could not only match
what nature has achieved, but surpass it, creating a new era of
technologies based on nanoscale engineering.
Part of Drexler’s speculation was that it should be possible to
create microscopically small self-replicating machines that are able
to disassemble the materials around them and use the constituent
atoms to build new materials, including replicas of themselves. This
would allow highly efficient, atomically precise manufacturing, and
“nanobots” that could make almost anything on demand out of what
they could scavenge from the surrounding environment.
Drexler’s ideas are the inspiration behind the nanobots seen in
Transcendence, where these microscopically small machines are
capable of building and rebuilding solar cells, support structures,
and even replacement limbs and organs, all out of the atoms,
molecules, and materials in their environment. While this is a vision
that sounds decidedly science fiction, it’s one that, on the surface,
looks like it should work. After all, it’s what nature does, and does
so well. We’re all made of atoms and molecules, and depend on
This is not to discredit the research that often underlies the use of
the buzzword. Scientists are making amazing strides on diseasebusting particles that can be biologically “programmed” to seek out
and destroy cancer cells, or can be guided through the bloodstream
using magnets or ultrasonic waves. And there have been some
quite incredible breakthroughs in developing complex molecules—
including using DNA as a programmable molecular construction
set—that operate much like minuscule molecular machines.
These are all advances that have attracted the term “nanobot.”
And yet, there are night-and-day differences between the science
they represent and imagined scenarios of minute autonomous
robots swimming through our bodies, or swarming through the
environment. Yet the idea of nanobots as a future reality persists.
evolved biological machines that use and make DNA, proteins, cells,
nerves, bones, skin, and so on. And just like nature, where there’s a
constant battle between “good” biological machines (the molecular
machines that keep us healthy and well) and the “bad” ones (the
proteins, viruses and bacteria that threaten our health), Drexler’s
vision of molecular machines is one that also has its potential
downsides.
One scenario that Drexler explored was the possibility that a
poorly designed and programmed nanobot could end up having an
overriding goal of creating replicas of itself, potentially leading to a
runaway chain reaction. Drexler speculated that, if these nanobots
were designed to use carbon as their basic building blocks, they
would only stop replicating when every last atom of carbon in the
world had been turned into a nanobot. As we’re all made of carbon,
this would be a problem.
This is the “gray goo” scenario, and it’s what prompted both
Bill Joy and Prince Charles to raise the alarm over the risks of
nanotechnology. And yet, despite their concerns and those of others,
it is a highly improbable scenario.
In order to work, these rogue nanobots would need some source
of power. Like we find in biology, this would most likely come
from chemical reactions, the heat they could scavenge from
their surroundings, heat directly from the sun, or (most likely) a
combination of all three. But to scavenge energy, the nanobots
would need to be pretty sophisticated. And to maintain and replicate
this sophistication, they would need an equally sophisticated diet
that would depend on more than carbon alone.
In addition to this, because there would be replication errors
and nanobot malfunctions, these nanomachines would need
to be programmed with the ability to repair themselves. This
in turn would require additional energy demands and levels
of sophistication. Even with a high level of sophistication,
random errors would most likely lead to generations of bots
that either petered out because they weren’t perfect, or started
to behave differently from the previous generation (much like
biological mutation).
And this leads to a third challenge. At some point, the nanobots
would find themselves hitting the limits of being able to replicate
exponentially. This might be due to an accumulation of replication
errors, or increasing competition with mutant nanobots. Or it
The chance of nanobots overcoming all three of these challenges
and creating a gray goo scenario are infinitesimally small. This is, in
part, because the chances of something else happening to scupper
their plans of world domination are overwhelmingly large. And
we know this because we have a wonderful example of a selfreplicating system to study: life on Earth.
DNA-based life is, in many ways, the perfect example of Drexler’s
molecular machines. It shows us what is possible, but it also
indicates rather strongly what is not, as well as demonstrating
what is necessary to create a sustainable system. We know from
studying the natural world that sustainability depends on diversity
and adaptability, two characteristics that are notably absent in the
gray goo scenario. We also know that sustainable systems based on
evolved molecular machines are incredibly complex, so complex,
in fact, that they are light-years away from what we are currently
capable of designing and manufacturing.
In effect, for a Drexler-type form of nanotechnology to emerge,
we would have to invent an alternative form of biology, one that
is most likely as complex as the biology we are all familiar with.
This may one day be possible. But at the moment, we are about
as far from doing this as the Neanderthals were from inventing
quantum computing.
Yet here’s the rub. Even though self-replicating nanobots and gray
goo lie for now in the realm of fantasy, this hasn’t stopped the idea
from having an impact on the decisions people make, including the
decision of ITC to attempt to murder a number of nanotechnologists.
This is where technological speculation gets serious in a bad way.
It’s one thing to speculate about what the future of tech might look
like. But it’s another thing entirely when make-believe is treated
as plausible reality, and this, in turn, leads to actions that end up
harming people.
Techno-terrorism is an extreme case, and thankfully a rare one—at
the moment, at least. But there are many more layers of decisionmaking that can lead to people and the environment being
harmed if science fantasy is mistaken for science fact. If policies
and regulations, for instance, are based on improbable scenarios,
could be brought about by a scarcity of physical space, or energy,
or raw materials. However it happened, a point would be reached
where the population of nanobots either became unsustainable and
crashed, or reached equilibrium with its surroundings.
or a lack of understanding of what a technology can and cannot
do, people are likely to suffer unnecessarily. Similarly, if advocacy
groups block technologies because of what they imagine their
impacts will be, but they are working with implausible or impossible
scenarios, people’s lives will be unnecessarily impacted. And if
investors and consumers avoid certain technologies because they’ve
bought into a narrative that belongs more in science fiction than
science reality, potentially beneficial technologies may never see the
light of day.
Of course, all new technologies come with risks and challenges,
and it’s important that, as a society, we work together on addressing
these as we think about the technological futures we want to build.
In some cases, the consensus may be that there are some routes
that we are not ready for yet. But what a tragedy it would be if we
turned away from some technological futures that could transform
lives for the better, simply because we become confused between
reality and make-believe.
Here, Transcendence definitely lives in the world of make-believe,
especially when it comes to the vision of nanotechnology that’s
woven into the movie’s narrative. And this is fine, as long as we’re
aware of it. But as soon as we start to believe our own fantasies, we
have a problem.
Thankfully, not every science fiction movie is quite as rooted in
fantasy as Transcendence. As we’ll see next with the movie The Man
in the White Suit, some provide surprisingly deep insights into the
reality of cutting-edge science and emerging technologies—including
the realities of modern-day nanotechnology.
[^120]: Ray Kurzweil (2005) “The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology.” Published by Penguin Books.
[^121]: To accompany the book, “The Singularity is Near,” Kurzweil published a wonderful series of plots showing evidence for exponential growth in different areas of technology innovation. You can explore them all at http://www.singularity.com/charts/page159.html
[^122]: I’ve tried not to be too critical of the science in the movies in this book, but in this case, I can’t help wondering how cyber-Will’s nanobots also managed to retrain the person’s neurological networks to make sense of the new signals coming from his eyes. Or, for that matter, how they managed to sort out the cognitive and psychological trauma the person would face as their eyes were rewired.
[^123]: Working in emerging technologies, it sometimes seems that every new wave of innovation represents a new “industrial revolution” to someone. Yet, even though not everyone agrees with the World Economic Forum’s terminology, there is some merit to thinking that we are in a unique period in our technological growth. As a primer on the Fourth Industrial Revolution, I’d recommend Klaus Schwab’s January 2016 article on the World Economic Forum website: “The Fourth Industrial Revolution: what it means, how to respond.” https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/01/the-fourth-industrial-revolution-what-it-means-and-how-to-respond/. And if you want more, there’s always his 2017 book, “The Fourth Industrial Revolution,” published by Crown Business.
[^124]: Mihail C. Roco and William S. Bainbridge (2003) “Converging Technologies for Improving Human Performance. Nanotechnology, biotechnology, information technology and cognitive science.” Published by the World Technology Evaluation Center (WTEC) https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/sites/default/files/microsites/ostp/bioecon-%28%23%20023SUPP%29%20NSF-NBIC.pdf
[^125]: Drew Endy (2005). “Foundations for engineering biology.” Nature 438. http://doi.org/10.1038/nature04342
[^126]: For a comprehensive history of the emergence of synthetic biology, going back to the 1960s, it’s worth reading Ewen Cameron, Caleb Bashor, and James Collins’ account in the journal Nature Reviews: Cameron, D. E., et al. (2014). “A brief history of synthetic biology.” Nature Reviews Microbiology 12: 381. http://doi.org/10.1038/nrmicro3239
[^127]: iGEM began in 2003, with the first competition being held in 2004. That first year, there were five teams competing. By 2017, there were 310 teams, with representatives from more than forty countries. You can read more about iGEM and the projects that past teams have worked on at http://igem.org/
[^128]: The articles were published as a collection under the title “Technology innovation and life in the 21st century: Views from Civil Society,” and can be read at 2020 Science. https://2020science.org/2016/01/22/technology-innovation-and-life-in-the-21st-century-views-from-civil-society/
[^129]: Jim Thomas (2009) “21st Century Tech Governance? What would Ned Ludd do?” Published on 2020 Science, December 18, 2009. https://2020science.org/2009/12/18/thomas/
[^130]: See “If Elon Musk is a Luddite, count me in!” The Conversation, published December 23, 2015. https://theconversation.com/if-elon-musk-is-a-luddite-count-me-in-52630
[^131]: “Unabomber” derives from the FBI codename UNABOM, reflecting Kaczynski’s University and Airline BOMbing targets.
[^132]: FBI, February 12, 2002. Testimony of James F. Jarboe, Domestic Terrorism Section Chief, Counterterrorism Division, Federal Bureau of Investigation, before the House Resources Committee, Subcommittee on Forests and Forest Health, Washington, DC. https://archives.fbi.gov/archives/news/testimony/the-threat-of-eco-terrorism
[^133]: Coincidentally, there was an earlier “ELF,” in this case standing for Environmental Life Force, which was formed by John Clark Hanna in 1977 in Santa Cruz, California, as an “eco-guerrilla combat unit.” Hanna was arrested on November 22, 1977 and the original ELF disbanded in 1978.
[^134]: From The Anarchist Library: Communiques of ITS. https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/ individualists-tending-toward-the-wild-communiques
[^135]: ITS members were not first to take an active dislike to nanotechnologists: In April 2010, three members of ELF were intercepted by Swiss police as they attempted to bomb a nanotechnology lab associated with IBM. To read more about this incident, I’d recommend Chris Toumey’s article in the journal Nature Nanotechnology: Toumey, C. (2013). “Anti-nanotech violence.” Nature Nanotechnology 8(10): 697-698. http://www.nature.com/nnano/journal/v8/n10/full/nnano.2013.201.html
[^136]: From The Anarchist Library: Communiques of ITS, Communique Eight (March 2014) https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/individualists-tending-toward-the-wild-communiques#toc36
[^137]: Bill Joy (2000) “Why the future doesn’t need us.” Published in Wired, April 1, 2000. https://www.wired.com/2000/04/joy-2/
[^138]: “The Unabomber Trial: The Manifesto.” Published in 1995 in The Washington Post. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/longterm/unabomber/manifesto.text.htm
[^139]: Kurzweil’s plot of the exponential growth of computing power can be accessed here: http://www.singularity.com/charts/page67.html
[^140]: As The Telegraph’s Roger Highfield wrote in June 2003. “Prince asks scientists to look into ‘grey goo’” (The Telegraph, June 5, 2003). http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/science-news/3309198/Prince-asks-scientists-to-look-into-grey-goo.html
[^141]: The resulting study from the Royal Society and Royal Academy of Engineering became one of the most influential reports on nanotechnology risks to be published. It did not take the risk of gray goo seriously, stating “We have concluded that there is no evidence to suggest that mechanical self-replicating nanomachines will be developed in the foreseeable future.” Royal Society and Royal Academy of Engineering (2004) “Nanoscience and nanotechnologies: opportunities and uncertainties.” https://royalsociety.org/topics-policy/publications/2004/nanoscience-nanotechnologies/