New Taboos by John Shirley Page B

are showing that they care—I know that—but there is a tendency for many of the superwealthy to be fairly awful, spoiled personalities. We see, hear, and read about them constantly; examples are unavoidable. But we can avoid that fate by making laws that restrict rejuvenation to people who deserve it. You’llget points for art, for science, for good works; add them up and
then
get rejuvenated.
    Every technology and every wrinkle of a technology has a dark side. Automated aircraft are supposed to be safer—but the airline industry lately has suffered from what an FAA committee called “automation addiction.” Pilots use automated systems for all but a few minutes of the flight—takeoff and landing. They simply program navigation into computers rather than using their hands to fly the plane. And when something goes wrong, they haven’t got the skills to deal with it anymore.
    Mastery of technology must include acknowledgement of its dark side. Mastery of technology means acceptance of limitations. Limitations have value: for example, limiting the amount of electricity sent through a power line to what that line can safely carry means electrical flow isn’t lost.
    A machine that pollutes is only partly invented. And a lot of the time we rush into technology so quickly that we don’t realize it’s going to pollute. It was recently discovered, for example, that every time a garment made from polyester and acrylic fibers is washed, it releases thousands of microplastic fibers that end up fouling coastal environments throughout the globe. No one expected that. No one had thought that form of manufacture through.
    Not all biotech innovation will lead to delightful results. People have been enthusiastically breeding dogs of every variety for some time. It’s thought that genetic engineering will enable us to create a species of dogs that can talk. Is that a good thing? I love dogs but you may not wantyour dog to be saying, “Feed me now, I’m hungry, what’s in your pocket, what’s that smell on your shoes, can we go outside and defecate, and by the way I hate the cat” when you get home from a long day’s work.
    In a lab in Glasgow, UK, one man is intent on proving that metal-based life is possible. He has managed to build cell-like bubbles from metal molecules and has given them life-like properties. He thinks he will be able to get them to evolve into fully inorganic self-replicating entities. “I am 100 percent positive that we can get evolution to work outside organic biology,” claims this researcher. If he’s right, we could
breed
the next form of technology.
    And it’s a little worrisome when you consider that researchers in Seoul, South Korea, and in Bristol, England, have developed plans for something they’re calling an
ecobot
—using the Venus Flytrap as a model. The ecobot is a robot that eats. It will be able to ingest flesh and turn it into fuel. Combine the ecobot with the evolving inorganic self-replicating entities planned by the scientist at the University of Glasgow … and feel a long slow chill at the thought.
    It’s time for a philosophy of technology—one that acknowledges its dark side and thinks proactively about the consequences of new technology so that negative consequences can be prepared for. Technology needs to evolve a conscience.
    The Real Singularity will offer us some great advances—including a redefinition of what money is, and how it will flow, propelled by a computerized awareness of every significant financial transaction. Paper money will be obsolete and thus money will be thoroughly trackable.As things stand now, finance is treated like meteorology. Its mysterious ebbs and flows are predicted rather like the way weather is: people forecast recessions and bubbles. The new computing power will make it possible to track almost every movement of monetary units in the world and will bring