Senior Associate JohnHeron writes "In an article from NYT Magazine written by Jon Gertner, Bill Joy, of Sun, vi and BSD fame, continued his warnings against the dangers of unfettered research and access to information in nanotech and biotech research. Joy believes that high risk research should be regulated. "He says he believes that businesses doing research in areas deemed risky by their peers should be forced to take out insurance against catastrophes. He also says that science guilds should have the authority to limit access to potentially dangerous ideas. 'Perhaps some knowledge won't be made public,' Joy says. 'Perhaps there would be secrets. You know, you couldn't just get the code to the plague or the flu if you wanted it.' " JohnHeron writes "In an article from this past weekends NYT Magazine, written by Jon Gertner, Bill Joy, of Sun, vi and BSD fame, continued his his warnings against the dangers of unfettered research and access to information in nanotech and biotech research. Joy believes that high risk research should be regulated. "Good science, he says, is the discovery of truth — for example, an experiment that yields an accurate result and that is repeatable. But science may not be good for us anymore if it yields a bad outcome. 'The Greeks knew better,' Joy says. 'Oedipus was destroyed by truth. He looked like he had a happy life until he learned one too many things. That's the cautionary tale.'"
Joy left Sun last year as Chief Scientist after 21 years of being the driving force behind many of Sun's successes with no definite plans. Behind him lay a legacy symbolized by the 900 pounds of professional papers and 20 file cabinets containing his personal records he took with him on leaving. Splitting his time between Marin and Aspen, Joy has only showed another side to his public personality as consummate Silicon Valley technologist and entrepreneur. Indeed he has indicated that when the right opportunity presents itself, one where his talents can make a difference, Joy will rejoin the world of Silicon Valley startups.
In an interview conducted in Aspen where he lives part of the time with his family, Joy reiterated the risks he perceives in unconsidered, unregulated research in robotics, nanotechnology and biotechnology he alluded to in the Wired article some years ago. Joy believes the probability of a "civilization changing event" is high, perhaps as high as 50 percent. He envisions the possibility of pandemic disease, pointing to polio virus assembled in a lab, Craig Ventner, of Celera fame's, plans to create organisms from scratch, lab insecurities at facilities doing high risk research, and copies of plague genome on the web for anybody to see. Joy says "public awareness will most likely come only after an actual accident at a company or university. Until then, speed … will trump caution. Markets are extremely good at go, they're not very good at stop, "and I think we need a little bit of stop right now. Or else we're not going to like the outcome."
"He says he believes that businesses doing research in areas deemed risky by their peers should be forced to take out insurance against catastrophes. He also says that science guilds should have the authority to limit access to potentially dangerous ideas. 'Perhaps some knowledge won't be made public,' Joy says. "Perhaps there would be secrets. You know, you couldn't just get the code to the plague or the flu if you wanted it.'' In this model, any given firm could be refused genomic information by a guild, or bankrupted by insurance costs, or rejected by venture capitalists or investors frightened away by potential expenses and liabilities."
"He is encouraged, for instance, that weapons of mass destruction have become water-cooler talk and that his speeches and writings have sparked a certain amount of debate in the scientific community. (Joy has been especially provocative on the threat of tiny self-replicating ''nanobots'' reducing all earthly matter — us included — to dust. This is what's known among theoreticians as the ''gray goo'' problem.) On the other hand, there have been scientists in the public and private sectors who have characterized Joy as a neo-Luddite. Or who regard him as an outlier, a software writer unqualified to speak authoritatively about the complexities of biotechnology."
Also, see discussion on Slashdot for some reactions to the story."
