Many argue that we are powerless in the face of such
massive change. Much of the memetic baggage accompanying the
singularity concept emphasizes the inevitability of
technological change and our utter impotence in confronting
it. Some proponents would have you believe that the universe
itself is structured to produce a singularity, so that
resistance is not simply futile, it's ridiculous.
Fortunately, they say, the post-singularity era will be one
of abundance and freedom, an opportunity for all that is
possible to become real. Those who try to divert or prevent
a singularity aren't just fighting the inevitable, they're
trying to deny themselves Heaven.

Others who take the idea of a singularity seriously are
terrified. For many deep ecologists, religious
fundamentalists, and other "rebels against the future," the
technologies underlying a singularity -- artificial
intelligence, nanotechnology, and especially biotechnology
-- are inherently cataclysmic and should be controlled (at
least) or eliminated (at best), as soon as possible. The
potential benefits (long healthy lives, the end of material
scarcity) do not outweigh the potential drawbacks (the
possible destruction of humanity). Although they do not
claim that resistance is useless, they too presume that we
are merely victims of momentous change.

Proponents and opponents alike both forget that
technological development isn't a law of the universe, nor
are we slaves to its relentless power. The future doesn't
just happen to us. We can -- and should -- choose the
future we want, and work to make it so.

Direct attempts to prevent a singularity are mistaken,
even dangerous. History has shown time and again that
well-meaning efforts to control the creation of powerful
technologies serve only to drive their development
underground into the hands of secretive government agencies,
sophisticated political movements, and global-scale
corporations, few of whom have demonstrated a consistent
willingness to act in the best interests of the planet as a
whole. These organizations -- whether the National Security
Agency, Aum Shinri Kyo, or Monsanto -- act without concern
for popular oversight, discussion, or guidance. When the
process is secret and the goal is power, the public is the
victim. The world is not a safer place with treaty-defying
surreptitious bioweapons labs and hidden nuclear
proliferation. Those who would save humanity by restricting
transformative technologies to a power elite make a tragic
mistake.

But centralized control isn't our only option. In April
of 2000, I had an opportunity to debate Bill Joy, the Sun
Microsystems engineer and author of the provocative Wired
article, "Why The Future Doesn't Need Us." He argued that
these transformative technologies could doom civilization,
and we need to do everything possible to prevent such a
disaster. He called for a top-down, international regime
controlling the development of what he termed
"knowledge-enabled" technologies like AI and nanotech,
drawing explicit parallels between these emerging systems
and nuclear weapon technology. I strongly disagreed. Rather
than looking to some rusty models of world order for
solutions, I suggested we seek a more dynamic, if
counter-intuitive approach: openness.

This is no longer the Cold War world of massive
military-industrial complexes girding for battle; this is a
world where even moderately sophisticated groups can and do
engage in cutting-edge development. Those who wish to do
harm will get their hands on these technologies, no
matter how much we try to restrict access. But if the
dangerous uses are "knowledge-enabled," so too are the
defenses. Opening the books on emerging technologies, making
the information about how they work widely available and
easily accessible, in turn creates the possibility of a
global defense against accidents or the inevitable
depredations of a few. Openness speaks to our long
traditions of democracy, free expression, and the scientific
method, even as it harnesses one of the newest and best
forces in our culture: the power of networks and the
distributed-collaboration tools they evolve.

Broad access to singularity-related tools and knowledge
would help millions of people examine and analyze emerging
information, nano- and biotechnologies, looking for errors
and flaws that could lead to dangerous or unintended
results. This concept has precedent: it already works in the
world of software, with the "free software" or "open source"
movement. A multitude of developers, each interested in
making sure the software is as reliable and secure as
possible, do a demonstrably better job at making
hard-to-attack software than an office park's worth of
programmers whose main concerns are market share, liability,
and maintaining trade secrets.

Even non-programmers can help out with distributed
efforts. The emerging world of highly-distributed network
technologies (so-called "grid" or "swarm" systems) make it
possible for nearly anyone to become a part-time researcher
or analyst. The "Folding@Home" project, for example, enlists
the aid of tens of thousands of computer users from around
the world to investigate intricate models of protein
folding, critical for the development of effective
treatments of complex diseases. Anyone on the Internet can
participate: just download the software, and boom, you're
part of the search for a cure. It turns out that thousands
of cheap, consumer PCs running the analysis as a background
task can process the information far faster than expensive
high-end mainframes or even supercomputers.

The more people participate, even in small ways, the
better we get at building up our knowledge and defenses. And
this openness has another, not insubstantial, benefit:
transparency. It is far more difficult to obscure the
implications of new technologies (or, conversely, to
oversell their possibilities) when people around the world
can read the plans. Monopolies are less likely to form when
everyone understands the products companies make. Even
cheaters and criminals have a tougher time, as any system
that gets used can be checked against known archives of
source code.

Opponents of this idea will claim that terrorists and
dictators will take advantage of this permissive information
sharing to create weapons. They will -- but this also
happens now, under the old model of global restrictions and
control, as has become depressingly clear. There will always
be those few who wish to do others harm. But with an open
approach, you also get millions of people who know how
dangerous technologies work and are committed to helping to
detect, defend and respond. That these are
"knowledge-enabled" technologies means that knowledge also
enables their control; knowledge, in turn, grows faster as
it becomes more widespread.

These technologies may have the potential to be as
dangerous as nuclear weapons, but they emerge like computer
viruses. General ignorance of how software works does not
stop viruses from spreading. Quite the opposite - it gives a
knowledgeable few the power to wreak havoc in the lives of
everyone else, and lets companies that keep the information
private a chance to deny that virus-enabling defects exist.
Letting everyone read the source code may help a few minor
sociopaths develop new viruses, but also enables a multitude
of users to find and repair flaws, stopping many viruses
dead in their tracks. The same applies to knowledge-enabled
transformative technologies: when (not if) a
terrorist figures out how to do bad things with
biotechnology, a swarm of people around the world looking
for defenses will make us safer far faster than would an
official bureaucracy worried about being blamed.

Consider: in early 2003, the U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency announced that it was upgrading its
nationwide system of air-quality monitoring stations across
to detect certain bioterror pathogens. Now, analyzing air
samples quickly requires enormous processing time; this
limits both the number of monitors and the variety of germs
they can detect. If one of the monitors picks up evidence of
a biological agent in the air, under current conditions it
will take time to analyze and confirm the finding, and then
more time to determine what treatments and preventive
measures -- if any -- will be effective.

Imagine, conversely, a more open system's response. EPA
monitoring devices could send data not to a handful of
overloaded supercomputers but to millions of PCs around the
nation -- a sort of "CivilDefense@Home" project. Working
faster, this distributed network could spot a wider array of
potential threats. When a potential threat is found, the
swarm of computers could quickly confirm the evidence, and
any and all biotech researchers with the time and resources
to work on countermeasures could download the data to see
what we're up against. Even if there are duplicated efforts,
the wider array of knowledge and experience brought to bear
on the problem has a greater chance of resulting in a
better solution faster - and of course answers
could still be sought in the restricted labs of the CDC, FBI
and USAMRIID. The more participants, the better.

Both the threat and the response could happen with
today's technology. Tomorrow's developments will only
produce more threats and challenges more quickly. Do we
really think government bureaucracies can handle them alone?

A move to a society that embraced open technology access
is possible, but it will take time. This is not a tragedy;
even half-measures are an improvement over a total clamp
down. The basic logic of an open approach -- we're safer
when more of us can see what's going on -- will still help
as we take cautious steps forward. A number of small
measures suggest themselves as good places to start:

Re-open academic discourse. Post-9/11 security fears
have led to restrictions on what scholarly researchers are
allowed to discuss or publish. Our ability to understand and
react to significant events -- disasters or otherwise -- is
hampered by these controls.

Public institutions should use open software. The
philosophy of open source software matches our traditions of
free discourse. Moreover, the public should have the right
to see the code underlying government activities. In some
cases, such as with word processing software, the public
value may be slight; in other cases, such as with electronic
voting software, the public value couldn't be greater. That
nearly all open source software is free means public
institutions will also save serious money over time.

Research and development paid for by the public should
be placed in the public domain. Proprietary interests should
not be able to use of government research grants for private
gain. We all should benefit from research done with our
resources.

Our founding fathers intended intellectual property
(IP) laws to promote invention, but IP laws today are used
to shore up cultural monopolies. Copyright and other IP
restrictions should reward innovation, not provide
hundred-plus year financial windfalls for companies long
after the innovators have died.

Those who currently develop these powerful technologies
should open their research to the public. Already there is a
growing "open source biotechnology" movement, and key
figures in the world of nanotechnology and artificial
intelligence have spoken of their desire to keep their work
open. This is, in many ways, the critical step. It could
become a virtuous cycle, with early successes in turn
bringing in more participants, more research, and greater
influence over policy.

While these steps would not result in the fully-open
world that would be our best hope for a safe future, they
would let in much-needed cracks of light.

Fortunately, the forces of openness are gaining a greater
voice around the world. The notion that self-assembling,
bottom-up networks are powerful methods of adapting to
ever-changing conditions has moved from the realm of
academic theory into the toolbox of management consultants,
military planners, and free-floating swarms of teenagers
alike. Increasingly, people are coming to realize that
openness is a key engine for innovation.

Centralized, hierarchical control is an effective
management technique in a world of slow change and limited
information -- the world in which Henry Ford built the model
T, say. In such a world, when tomorrow will look pretty much
the same as today, that's a reasonable system. In a world
where each tomorrow could see fundamental transformation of
how we work, communicate, and live, it's a fatal mistake.

A fully open, fully distributed system won't spring forth
easily or quickly. Nor will the path of a singularity be
smooth. There is a feedback loop between society and
technology -- changes in one drive changes in the other, and
vice-versa -- but there is also a pace disconnect between
them. Tools change faster than culture, and there is a
tension between the desire to build new devices and systems
and the need for the existing technologies to be integrated
into people's lives. As a singularity gets closer, this
disconnect will worsen; it's not just that society lags
technology, it's that technology keeps lapping society,
which is unable to settle on new paradigms before having to
start anew. People trying to live in fairly modern ways live
shoulder-by-jowl with people desperately trying to hang on
to well-understood traditions, and both are still confronted
by surprising new concepts and systems.

Change lags and lurches, as rapid improvements and
innovations in technology are haphazardly integrated into
other aspects of our culture(s). Technologies cross-breed,
and advances in one realm spur a flurry of breakthroughs in
others. These new discoveries and inventions, in turn, open
up new worlds of opportunities and innovation.

If there is a key driving force pushing towards a
singularity, it's international competition for power. This
ongoing struggle for power and security is why, in my view,
attempts to prevent a singularity simply by international
fiat are doomed. The potential capabilities of
transformative technologies are simply staggering. No nation
will risk falling behind its competitors, regardless of
treaties or UN resolutions banning intelligent machines or
molecular-scale tools. The uncontrolled global
transformation these technologies may spark is, in strategic
terms, far less of a threat than an opponent having a
decided advantage in their development -- a "singularity
gap," if you will. The "missile gap" that drove the early
days of the nuclear arms race would pale in comparison.

Technology doesn't make the singularity inevitable; the
need for power does. One of the great lessons of the 20th
century was that openness -- democracy, free expression, and
transparency -- is the surest way to rein in the worst
excesses of power, and to spread its benefits to the
greatest number of us. Time and again, we have learned that
the best way to get decisions that serve us all is to let us
all decide.

The greatest danger we face comes not from a singularity
itself, but from those who wish us to be impotent at its
arrival, those who wish to keep its power for themselves,
and those who would hide its secrets from the public. Those
who see the possibility of a revolutionary future of
abundance and freedom are right, as are those who fear the
possibility of catastrophe and extinction. But where they
are both wrong is in believing that the future is out of our
hands, and should be kept out of our hands. We need an open
singularity, one that we can all be a part of. That kind of
future is within our reach; we need to take hold of it now.