A few things bring me to this notable Ian Malcolm moment
from Jurassic Park.
First, the film “Fat Man and Little Boy” (more on that
later), the story of the Manhattan Project told by Paul Newman and Dwight
Schultz.
The war in Europe was over, and there was no chance the
Japanese could develop an atomic bomb. Robert Oppenheimer, then, saw no reason
for the United States to pursue such a weapon.
But the United States forged onward (if the ethics and
timeline of this movie are to be believed), developed the atomic bomb, and
dropped two of them on Japan to end the war.
Thus began the Cold War.
Would it have begun regardless?
I don’t know. Because the Americans had their German
scientists, as did the Russians. Was one government more ethical than the
other?
I’m not smart enough to know.
Then there’s this: A toolkit developed for app developers
and web designers and unicorn-creators, meant to put the should into the could
of Silicon Valley.
Its purveyors tout the toolkit’s ability – properly and thoughfully
executed will help companies avoid the should/could “dormroom conundrum,”
though there are ifs and whens big enough in their program to drive a truck
through.
Can such toolkits help avoid unintended consequences?
Maybe they can make them less likely, but eliminate them?
Not hardly. Humankind, in all its ingenuity, kindness, guile and ugliness will
always find a way to twist what’s made to their own ends, be the ends good or
evil.
For the same reason Ian Malcolm chides the scientists of
Isla Nublar: There was no discipline to attain [the use].
Before the Everyone Can Publish days of the Internet, there
was discipline, in the form of gatekeepers, agents, bosses, editors, and the
weeding of the mediocre from the great.* There was discipline in getting the
kind of job that would get you on the air, listening to editors and agents to
the point your book could get published.
No more. Now anyone with a wild thought and a little bit of
cash and talent can get “published,” without the discipline that once ruled the
universe. Or at least throttled it to a great extent.
The genie of the Internet won’t go back into the
DARPA-opened bottle.
The magic of the Internet is its freedom. That is also its
curse. And users and companies – complicit or blind to their own unethical
practices – will always find ways to usurp the tools created.
That checklist could include a willingness to develop deeper
thinking and analytical skills so we can detect and avoid the fake news – at
least the fake news we disagree with, because pick anyone, and there’s fake
news they want to believe.
Don’t believe me? Here’s what Clay Shirky has to say –
pre-Trump:
There's no way to get Cronkite-like consensus without
someone like Cronkite, and there's no way to get someone like Cronkite in a
world with an Internet; there will be no more men like him, because there will
be no more jobs like his. To assume that this situation can be reversed, and
everyone else will voluntarily sign on to the beliefs of some culturally
dominant group, is a fantasy. To assume that they should, or at least that they
should hold their tongue when they don't, is Napoleonic in its self-regard. Yet
this is what the people who long for the clarity of the old days are longing
for.
(Shirky’s piece is well worth reading in full.)
The genie that is the Internet isn’t going back into the
bottle. Users have to decide what tradeoffs they’re willing to make, whether
they’re dealing with EthicalOS or the Wild West.
*Which doesn’t explain Terry Brooks, but you see what I
mean.
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