In article <4d4ho2$3dc@foglet.rutgers.edu>,
Thomas Kalbfus <tkalbfus@westnet.com> wrote:
>With JoSHes Utility fog such power hungry people could be surrounded
>by constructs which appear human and obey everything he says. ...
The premise here is that Utility Fog can *completely* fool the senses of anyone surrounded by it. Sounds like "humane" solitary confinement for those you don't want to deal with any more.
Moral questions arise here. At what point would you "sentence" a criminal, or any anti-social type, to this eternal masturbation. And, if you control this technology, what is to stop your own dark tendancies from placing someone in a kind of "VR-Hell"? (Of course, a "VR-Bootcamp" could be constructive re-socialization, and make the penal system cheap...)
The problem here is, some one else could place you "in a Fog" without your knowing it. If Utility Fog is allowed to be universally programable, you open the Pandora's Box wide to every nano-tech misuse imaginable.
If one would not consider giving every citizen an omnivorous, programable, replicating, assembler for every private whim, how can we so casually discuss the mind-control aspects of Utility Fog without placing it in the same potential catagory as Grey-Goo?
I welcome JoSH's response to the security issues inherent in Utility Fog, and how its benefits outweigh its dangers.
Rob
[It's not that hard to invent sets of laws that reduce the dangers drastically. Consider the "invention" of fire -- now anybody can burn down anybody else's house! Horrible! But if we adopt a law of private property, each person gets to decide whether to burn his own house, and no one else's. The same principle could be applied, in more sophisticated form, to Fog. Remember that methods of detection gain as well as methods of perpetration. --JoSH]