Part 8: Fight the Future
The conference ended on a Sunday morning with Bill Joy, the co-founder of Sun Microsystems, and a towering figure in the development of modern operating systems, languages, and ideas.

Joy wrote a seminal article in Wired magazine early this year that sounded a warning bell about the convergence of genetic engineering, nanotechnology, and robotics (GNR), which might put vast destructive power in the hands of millions of people and spell doom for mankind and even all life on the planet.

Joy's talk recapitulated his article, which I advise reading. It's a cogent case for standing back and better understanding the speed of development of these three technologies, and how wholesale, blind adoption and continuing research without thought for consequences could produce effects orders of magnitude larger than the impact of previous technologies.

Even if society attempts to control and wrap up this technology, without a concerted effort and agreements that restrict aspects of GNR, he argued, even a tiny percentage of highly functional but potentially delusional individuals could still have enough power to destroy the world. He cited physicist Hans Bethe's notion that scientists need a Hippocratic Oath to prevent them from working on weapons of mass destruction, even indirectly.

Joy concluded that he'd rather not see the end of our species as the result of an accident or the efforts of crazy people.

Bob Metcalfe, the inventor of Ethernet, a founder of 3Com, and a 10-year-long pundit for InfoWorld magazine (until recently), summed up the event. He noted how hard it is to change people's mind and cited the Monty Hall paradox as an example. In the gameshow, "Let's Make a Deal," Monty Hall would show people three doors and ask them to select one; a prize was behind only one door.

The odds are 1 in 3 that the contestant guesses the right door. Here's the twist: Hall would sometimes open another door, and show a wrong choice. He would ask the person if they wanted to change their mind. Metcalfe asked the audience how many people thought changing the door improved odds, worsened odds, or made for difference, and he noted the audience was split three ways.

He then revealed the paradox: In fact, switching improves your odds, because the problem has been recast as a 1 in 2 situation, but you only get the improved odds when you switch. If you don't switch, even if there are only two choices left you're still in the 1 in 3 paradigm because that's where you placed your bet originally, and Monty knows where the prize is the whole time. Many members of the audience refused to believe Metcalfe's explanation (which is backed up by The New York Times, Monty Hall himself, and many mathematicians). He urged people to get three playing cards and run through the problem. He had thus demonstrated his point.