It is the first moment in the history of our planet when a species, by its own voluntary actions, has become a danger for itself – as well as for a large number of others.
It could be a familiar progression, which takes place on many worlds – a newly formed planet, turns around its star; Life is formed slowly; A kaleidoscopic procession of creatures evolves; Intelligence emerges which, at least up to a certain point, gives enormous value of survival; And then technology is invented. There are things that there are things such as the laws of nature, that these laws can be revealed by experience, and that knowledge of these laws can be done both to save and take lives, both in unprecedented scales. Science, they recognize, grant immense powers. In a flash, they create artifices modifying the world. Some planetary civilizations see their way through, the placement limits on what can and what should not be done and pass safely over the time of perils. Others, not as lucky or so cautious, perishes.
It is Carl Sagan, writing in 1994, in Pale blue pointA book describing his vision of the human future in space. I only realize now how deep his ideas were and how much I lack a lot of things and I lack his voice. Despite all its eloquence, Sagan’s contribution was nonetheless that of simple sense – an attribute which, with humility, many main defenders of 21st century technologies seem to be missing.
I remember my childhood that my grandmother was strongly against the overuse of antibiotics. She had worked since before the First World War as a infirmarian and had an attitude of common sense that antibiotics, unless they were absolutely necessary, was bad for you.
It was not that she was an enemy of progress. She saw a lot of progress during a nursing career of almost 70 years; My grandfather, a diabetic, greatly benefited from the improved treatments that have become available during his lifetime. But she, like many people at the level of level, would probably think that he is very arrogant for us, now, to conceive of a robotic “kind of replacement”, when we obviously have so much trouble making relatively simple things work, and so much difficulty in managing – or even understanding – ourselves.
I now realize that she was aware of the nature of the order of life and the need to live with and respect this order. With this respect, a necessary humility that we, with our CHUTZPAH from the beginning of the 13th century, we lack at our risk. The vision of common sense, founded in this regard, is often fair, before scientific evidence. The clear fragility and the ineffectiveness of human manufacturing systems that we have built should take a break; The fragility of the systems on which I worked on M’humlie certainly.
We should have learned from the manufacture of the first atomic bomb and the resulting arms race. We did not do well then and the parallels with our current situation are disturbing.
The effort to build the first atomic bomb was led by the brilliant physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer. Oppenheimer was not naturally interested in politics but became painfully aware of what he perceived as the serious threat to the Western civilization of the Third Reich, a surely serious threat because of the possibility that Hitler can obtain nuclear weapons. Energy by this concern, he brought his strong intellect, his passion for physics and his skills in charismatic leadership in Los Alamos and led an incredible collection of great minds to quickly invent the bomb.