>From: "john grigg" <starman125@hotmail.com>
>A very bright but criminally minded individual or group might be able to
>hack into the safeguards so they could create whatever they pleased,
>including antrax. Even the best defenses can be overcome by those with the
>brains, education, time and money.
>
>I could really see the federal government feeling that near-anything boxes
>in homes would be somewhat like letting citizens have their own personal
>nukes. Once there is even one major incident/scare the gov't would move in
>a way that would make the gun control issue look minor by comparison.
>
>In the name of public safety and national security, we may never be allowed
>these replicators within our homes in the first place. The gov't and
>corporate powers may say, "come to us, and for a "nominal" charge we will
>create what you want."
>
>Underground groups would have massive federal resources allocated against
>them, to put them behind bars. The hacker hunts would pale by comparison.
>Nano would be used to violate civil liberties that would be reminiscient of
>the war on drugs but more clandestine and for that reason even more
>threatening to people's rights.
>
>My hope is that home nanoreplicator technology will develop very
>incrementally and we will see it gain a foothold in the private citizen's
>realm that will not be possible to reverse. May corporate greed and the
>forces of capitalism triumph in this area! So we will see a nanoreplicator
>and then eventually a near-anything box in every home! LOL! With
>capitalistic inducements, proper safeguards and no individual or group
>overcoming them to do something really vicious as an excuse for the gov't,
>we may see our dreams come true.
>
>
>sincerely,
>
>John Grigg
Come to think of it, I don't want you to have a near-anything box. Who's to
say you won't make assisation nano-bots to resolve a personal dispute
between us? Or perhaps you join a doomsday cult and your "god" commands you
to set nerve gas loose in my neighborhood. To be honest, I don't (yet)
trust my fellow man enough to give him almost unlimited power to create
whatever his heart desires in the privacy of his own home.
Maybe its a good idea for the government to restrict access to this tech
until we have evolved to the place where we as a species are a lot more
trustworthy. I'm afraid that may not happen until after some nano-disaster
makes us realize finally that we either love and live together or we don't
and become extinct together.
-Zero
"To infinity and beyond!"
-- B. Lightyear
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu Jul 27 2000 - 14:04:42 MDT