A Double-Edged Sword
Technology may bring us longer and healthier lives, freedom from physical and mental drudgery, and countless creative possibilities, but it also introduces new and salient dangers. For the 21st century, we will see the same intertwined potentialsonly greatly amplified.
Consider unrestrained nanobot replication, which requires billions or trillions of such intelligent devices to be useful. The most cost-effective way to scale nanobots up to that level is through self-replicationessentially the same approach seen in the biological world. But just as biological self-replication can go awry (cancer), a defect in the mechanism that curtails nanobot self-replication could also endanger all physical entitiesbiological or otherwise.
And who will control the nanobots? Organizations (governments or extremist groups) or just a clever individual could put trillions of undetectable nanobots in the water or food supply of an entire population. These "spy" nanobots could then monitor, influence, and even take over our thoughts and actions. Nanobots could also fall prey to software viruses and hacks.
If we described the dangers that exist today to people who lived a couple hundred years ago, they would think it mad to take such risks. But how many people living in 2001 would want to go back to the short, brutish, disease-filled, poverty-stricken, disaster-prone lives that 99 percent of the human race struggled through? We may romanticize the past, but until fairly recently, most of humanity lived extremely fragile lives. Substantial portions of our species still live in this precarious way, which is at least one reason to continue technological progress and the economic enhancement that accompanies it.
My own expectation is that the creative and constructive applications of this technology will dominate, as I believe they do now. And there will be a valuable (and increasingly vocal) role for a constructive Luddite movement.
When examining the impact of future technology, people often go through three stages: awe and wonderment at the potential; dread about the new set of grave dangers; and finally (hopefully), the realization that the only viable path is to set a careful, responsible course that realizes the promise while managing the peril.