The irritating thing about this (and I've only seen the article in
Monday's
New York Times and the interview in the Washington Post; I haven't read
the Wired article yet) is not that the man is nervous, but the
tone of sanctimonious self-aggrandizement inherent, for example, in
the comparison to Albert Einstein in 1939 writing his wake-up letter
to Franklin Roosevelt. When did Bill Joy acquire the gravitas in the
public consciousness that made Einstein the appropriate person for such
a gesture in '39? While I am conscious of Mr. Joy as the author of
the text editor I use daily (I've never learned Emacs, to my shame!),
I suspect that to the general public, the proper name "Joy" is more
likely to be associated with dishwashing detergent than with Berkeley
UNIX or Sun Microsystems. Also, could it be that Mr. Joy has only just
now woken up to these possibilities -- perhaps he's had enough spare
time on his hands recently to surf the Web or catch up on his reading?
(at least the recent books by Kurzweil and Moravec were acknowledged in
the Times article).
How do you stop, before it's too late?
You choose, and you lose, if you hesitate...
How do you stop a runaway train?
How do you stop the driving rain?
How do you stop the ripening corn?
How do you stop a baby being born?
How do you stop, before it's too late?
Joni Mitchell, "How Do You Stop?" in
_Turbulent Indigo_, Reprise 9 45786-2
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