Human Evolution

The 6 epochs of evolutionby Ray Kurzweil

There is also a tremendous moral imperative. We still have not millions but billions of people who are suffering from disease and poverty, and we have the opportunity to overcome those problems through these technological advances. You can’t tell the millions of people who are suffering from cancer that we’re really on the verge of great breakthroughs that will save millions of lives from cancer, but we’re cancelling all that because the terrorists might use that same knowledge to create a bioengineered pathogen.

This is a true and valid concern, but we’re not going to do that. There’s a tremendous belief in society in the benefits of continued economic and technological advance. Still, it does raise the question of the dangers of these technologies, and we can talk about that as well, because that’s also a valid concern....