 |
|
It's Alive: The Coming Convergence of Information, Biology, and Business by Christopher Meyer and Stan Davis. Crown Business. 2003. 275 pages. Check price/buy book.
The Coming of a Molecular Economy
The convergence of nanotech, biotech, and accelerated computing will bring on a new Molecular Economy, write the authors of It's Alive.
Reviewed by Lane Jennings
You needn’t always welcome a particular vision of tomorrow to regard it as a serious possibility. By this standard, It’s Alive is a book that no one should ignore.
Despite their upbeat tone and obvious enthusiasm for technology-driven social change, business trend-watchers Christopher Meyer and Stan Davis, co-authors of Blur: The Speed of Change in the Connected Economy (Perseus, 1998), foresee a future that many who value traditional notions of environmental security and human happiness will probably deplore--and may well organize to oppose.
The message of It’s Alive is that a wave of new products and inventions based on artificial materials, tiny machines, and whole living creatures created by manipulating molecules, splicing genes from different sources, or cut-and-pasting individual atoms will soon radically change human life and society. This new era, which the authors dub "the Molecular Economy," will bring many long-held dreams to reality, but also demand major changes in business behavior and daily life.
Meyer and Davis review how mid-twentieth-century research in solid-state physics produced transistors, computer chips, lasers, and countless other high-tech products in the decades after World War II. The resulting demand for consumer electronic gear of all kinds, and the ever-faster pace of information exchange that these devices made possible, have forced businesses, governments, and private individuals to adapt in many ways. Just as information exchange has supplanted manufacturing as the prime moving force in today’s global economy, so, the authors insist, biotech, nanotech, and materials development will quickly come to dominate life in the twenty-first century--and in a matter of years, not decades.
"Killer apps" likely to spearhead the irresistible advance of the Molecular Economy include "matter compilers"--devices not unlike the "replicators" familiar to fans of Star Trek that can fashion desired end products molecule by molecule, directly from raw materials, at low cost and using less energy than conventional manufacturing. Nanotechnology and artificial intelligence in combination will, the authors believe, soon make possible a home health-care device that lets "patients" effortlessly check their own blood pressure, temperature, and other key indicators on a continuing basis. By linking such devices to central databases of information on disease symptoms and effective countermeasures including drugs, treatments, and lifestyle changes, the main activity of organized medicine will shift from treating the sick to monitoring and maintaining each individual’s good health.
Personalized lifelong learning will be facilitated by the development of a computer-based program, sometimes called an "agent" or "daemon," that will not only search and retrieve information on request, but will learn from experience to anticipate an individual’s needs and supply just-in-time expertise to handle any situation. The long-awaited computer-generated virtual-reality environment (which Meyer and Davis redub "the experience machine") is another likely wonder of the coming Molecular Age. Expected advances in computer modeling and innovative data display could even allow laboratory-style experiments based on the recorded behavior and interaction styles of thousands or even millions of real individuals (not mere mathematical averages), thus making social science problems--from organizational design to personal career planning--more objectively solvable, like problems in physical science and engineering.
Such developments as these would be wonders indeed. But at what cost are they to be achieved? Toward the close of their book, Meyer and Davis concede that "progress always has its downside." But one wonders how seriously they have considered possible negative impacts of the new era they foresee.
As these writers glibly put it: "The key social downside of the industrial economy continues to be the condition of the environment, while that of the information era appears to be privacy. In the coming [Molecular] economy, the key issues will be ethical."
Civil Rights for Robots?
Specifically, they anticipate continuing debate about cloning and disagreement over the rights of robots and artificial intelligence programs "once they appear to be conscious and feeling." But a careful look through their text reveals many problems far more serious than these.One of these is the pace of change. Meyer and Davis accept without qualms the concept of "permanent volatility" in the marketplace, and, by extension, throughout society as a whole. Though they note that the speed of change "has accelerated" and that "volatile events are of greater magnitude and occur more frequently," they assume that "anyone trying to run a business--or live a life, for that matter"--will manage to adapt to ever-faster and more violent change simply because they have no option.
However, the resurgence of religious fundamentalism in many parts of the world, and the existence of eco-activists and other groups opposed to globalization, secular government, and technological determinism, suggest that not all people are willing to accept constant change as the new norm for human existence. More important, a significant and dangerously powerful minority, such as al Qaeda, have demonstrated their determination to stop the world rather than see any part of it continue along the path toward a future they themselves have rejected.
Another problem is reliability. Consider the recent spectacular failures of the power grids in the United States and western Europe, or the recurring disruptions to be expected from hurricanes and other weather phenomena not yet nor soon likely to be under human control. Is it really wise to depend much more on technology than we already do? Add to this the potential for deliberate sabotage, identity theft, and other illegal activities, and the possibilities for molecular man/machine mayhem become truly frightening.
Finally, there is the issue of human identity. Meyer and Davis are comfortable with the possibility that developing a robot or computer device with more than human intelligence may simply be our species’ way of advancing the process of evolution. They even ask, "How can we accept the concept of evolution yet believe that it stops with us?"
That’s a fair question, and not necessarily disturbing in itself. But unlike our primitive ancestor species, we are proposing to consciously construct (and thereby necessarily limit) the species that will supplant Homo sapiens. What makes us believe we are up to the task? Is superior intelligence always a mark of evolutionary advance? And why be in such a hurry to make ourselves machine-dependent or wholly expendable?
By all means, let’s develop "matter compilers," but let’s never rely on them alone for everything we eat, wear, or use. Intelligent software for home health devices can certainly cut costs and improve the well-being of many. But let’s be sure there are always some human beings available who still know how to treat a wound or comfort a cold, or where to gather roots and herbs when the power fails or the market is closed. Let’s definitely develop robot teachers or other computerized personal mentors that can challenge and stimulate our learning, but let’s also actively resist the temptation to become more dependent on them than we are today on cell phones and handheld computers.
Unlike Meyer and Davis, I believe we must first speculate, and later constantly reexamine the issues of regulation, productivity, pornography, censorship, and ethics that emerge as we develop experience machines that make it "difficult to distinguish entertainment from drugs." The intention is not to suppress such devices, but, by responsible technology assessment, to make sure their existence does not make real life no longer seem worth living.
If, as the authors suggest, adaptation ultimately leads to the evolution of a life-form superior to ourselves, let us make every effort to ensure that its superiority is not based on physical strength or even intellect alone, but demonstrates an ability to accomplish more than we have been able to do, without, as we have so often done, causing heedless damage to "lower" life-forms. Human beings may not be the end goal of evolution, but that’s no reason to make ourselves extinct.
About the Reviewer
Lane Jennings is research director of THE FUTURIST and production editor of Future Survey.
[Reviewed in THE FUTURIST, January-February 2004]return to top
COPYRIGHT © 2004 WORLD FUTURE SOCIETY
7910 Woodmont Avenue, Suite 450, Bethesda, Maryland 20814.
Tel. 301-656-8274. E-mail info@wfs.org. Web site http://www.wfs.org.
All rights reserved.