Yes, it can be erroneously reduced to that. "Guns don't kill, people do", yet there are more murders pr. capita in the US than in gun-restricted Scandinavia. Most of which are carried out with firearms. Go figure.
Technology enables people to do catastrophic things on a scale never seen before. Technology has made total devastation of the planet in a matter of hours possible, and introduced a lot of other risks to the society and the environment.
So it's good to be cautious and not just take a back-seat approach, no?
EDIT: Especially when people can print out working models of weapons, totally undermining years and years of legislation in the developed world.
' Wrote:Yes, it can be erroneously reduced to that. "Guns don't kill, people do", yet there are more murders pr. capita in the US than in gun-restricted Scandinavia. Most of which are carried out with firearms. Go figure.
Technology enables people to do catastrophic things on a scale never seen before. Technology has made total devastation of the planet in a matter of hours possible, and introduced a lot of other risks to the society and the environment.
So it's good to be cautious and not just take a back-seat approach, no?
Technology also enables people to do good. Without enhancements in farming and medicine, the extra 5 billion people we put on the planet in the last 200 years wouldn't be here.
It's not like there was no crime before the industrial revolution.
No what worries me is the scale. People have always been able to kill people, modern technology just made it a lot faster, easier and more efficient.
Also in regards to putting an extra 5 billion people on the planet, that is in itself a catastrophy. The 21st century is going to be signified by mass-migration, and historically mass-migration has always lead to conflict and wars (Ghengis Khan anyone?).
' Wrote:No what worries me is the scale. People have always been able to kill people, modern technology just made it a lot faster, easier and more efficient.
Any process that aids in the construction/assembly of goods/materials makes it easier to produce weapons. You can't just stop research into improving technological processes.
But if we haphazardly reduce everything it that manner, we relieve ourselves of any and all responsibility. It's a cop-out, isn't it?
Also this specific case is not just about making weapon production easier, it's about making it possible. There's a radical difference right there, wouldn't you say?
' Wrote:But if we haphazardly reduce everything it that manner, we relieve ourselves of any and all responsibility. It's a cop-out, isn't it?
Also this specific case is not just about making weapon production easier, it's about making it possible. There's a radical difference right there, wouldn't you say?
So if anything is possible, we should police and regulate ourselves.
Surely if anything is possible then we can find a way to do that.