From a Seattle Times article, March 19, 2000.

Ed Lazowska

(As chairman of the University of Washington Computer Science and Engineering Department, Lazowska has put his stamp on innumerable start-up companies and research projects. He has known Joy since Joy's days as a graduate student at the University of California, Berkeley.)

I don't think people are dismissive (of the potential harm from technology development). There has always been a vigorous debate.

On the other hand, this has not stopped the march of technology.

Here is an analogy. It is clear that we deploy software systems that are so complex that they outstrip our ability to engineer reliability into them. Patients have been killed by software errors in radiation-therapy machines, for example. Should we restrict applications of software to areas where we have complete confidence - to "prove correctness"? There has not been much sentiment to do so.

There was a wonderful piece in the New York Times Magazine two years ago. I believe it was by Bran Ferren, who at the time ran Disney Imagineering. It hypothesized that by 2025 we would have implants that would allow "direct-coupled Web browsing." The article was titled something like "The Intercranial Internet."

How would this come to be? Well, you would survive an auto accident, and your doctor would say to you, "I've got some bad news and some good news. The bad news is that you've lost your sight. The good news is that if you'll let me do this new microprocessor implant, I can restore it. While we're at it, would you like the $125 Web-browsing enhancement?"

This is not far-fetched. Chris Diorio in my department is working with Tom Daniel in zoology and Dennis Willows at the (UW) Friday Harbor Lab to implant microprocessors in sea slugs, with the first-stage goal of understanding how they control their motion, and the second-stage goal of controlling it for them.

Every technology has its risks and its rewards. The "killer app" (killer application - the use that makes something popular) of technologies is often not a positive use. For example, Gutenberg's killer app was not the Bible - it was printing and selling indulgences (tickets to sin). The Bible was a serendipitous side effect.

What's important is a vigorous debate.