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Re: [dist-obj] The Future's so bright...

   I see Bill Joy's writing as the typical mental disturbances caused by a male
   mid-life crisis. Suddenly Bill is starting to realize that nothing that he
   does, absolutely nothing, will change how the future is going to look like,
   because it is no longer in his hands, but in that of the generations after
   him. The future is much bigger than a Jini directory services. Now he starts
   to ramble about how bad the future is going to look like with the
   steam-engines, cars, computer, networks, robots, ... 

   many of the young adult generations are growing up in a much more emotional
   intelligent way, able to handle typical electronic age relationships in much
   better ways than us, their parents, who are severely handicapped in this
   field. The fact that the bill joy generation cannot handle these issues
   doesn't mean their children can't, and if the past is any predictor of the
   future we can confidence that they will make something good out of it (and
   screw up in other ways).

Werner -- I had the almost exact identical reaction to Bill Joy's
writings, but where you say that the future is/could be "bigger", I'd say
"bigger with qualifications" in certain areas, but certainly "smaller
in others". The reason, and I think that this position may be somewhat
controversial, is that I think that scientists and engineers, as a
group, actually have an aversion to the truly difficult problems;
There's just too much cost in terms of career and emotional well being
tied to going after "big" unsolved problems. And it takes even more
organizational and political inertia to label things like the
genome/protein folding problems, or internet2 or AIDS as national
priorities.  Hence it has been my impression that most tend to look
where the light is, and progress tends to be, by and large,
incremental. 

Moravec and Drexler have been around for a while, and yet robots like
the ones they speak of, are nowhere near reality. The press hails as a
breakthrough something as silly as ant-like behavior that doesn't
replicate anywhere else outside a certain small set of laborartory
conditions -- but after all, they need stories to write. So I hardly
worry like Joy. I rarely in my visions foresee humans controlled by
networked intelligences or robots. But knowing history, I *do* worry
about the anti-science and the pseudo-science crowd -- i.e. about
"other" humans, and consequently about issues that continue to divide
us as peoples. 

I'd also like to make a point about your last paragraph. While it may
or may not be true that each generation "handles" its problems about
as well as any other, I think it behooves us as adults to guide our
children, and to inform them about the dangers that the highly
connected world brings with it. In that sense, I think Joy reflects
the right set of middle-aged worries -- after all, you'd probably
agree that the parental concerns of those that live in a neighborhood
whose teens are driving off to meet adults thrice their age they met
on the net are not entirely misplaced. :)




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