Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!rutgers!aramis.rutgers.edu!athos.rutgers.edu!nanotech From: jwi@lzfme.att.com (Jim Winer @ AT&T, Middletown, NJ) Newsgroups: sci.nanotech Subject: Re: viruses, computer & bio (plus a fix) Message-ID: Date: 2 Aug 89 01:14:58 GMT Sender: nanotech@athos.rutgers.edu Organization: AT&T, Lincroft NJ Lines: 48 Approved: nanotech@aramis.rutgers.edu The reference lines are a mess, but somebody writes: | | | ||But, I don't think this is quite the entire picture. One promise | ||of nanotechnology is the ability to make that nanovirus vastly | ||more *selective* in it's targets, hence a better weapon. One might | ||build an AI-based nanovirus that would only spare ardent capitalists, | ||for instance. | | | |I find the idea of a nanovirus that could read personalities very | |unlikely,... | Au contraire, mon frere :-) ... There is a much | simpler way the nanovirus can get a pretty good picture of how good | a capitalist you are, (as well as much else). It simply contacts its | compatriots, that have infiltrated your financial records, ... It's actually far easier to create a virus that spares only ardent capitalists, and far more likely -- just create something extremely deadly, extremely contagious, and extremely expensive to cure. Then let it infect everyone. Only the ardent capitalists who can afford the cure will survive. In fact, this seems a likely scenario in the near future. (It's certaily one effective way for the wealthy to solve the overpopulation and pollution problems.) Jim Winer ..!lzfme!jwi (Please don't email, unable to reply outside AT&T) Those persons who advocate censorship offend my religion. Upuaut: a wolf-headed Egyptian deity | Voodoo: the art of sticking ideas assigned as Guidance System | into people and watching for the Barque of Ra. | them bleed. The opinions expressed here are not necessarily [If I were wealthy, capitalist or not, and I wanted to wipe out any section of the population, the *last* thing I would do would be something that required me to shell out for an expensive cure. Besides the expense, people might catch on, become envious, and take your money by force. The obvious way to go about killing off the human race is to do it selectively, a small unpopular group at a time, so that most of the people spend most of their effort saying "thank god I'm not one of *them*" until it's too late. Of course, it's not the rich who want to upset the applecart anyway-- after all, they're on top now. It's usually the poor who feel they would benefit from major upheavals (not that they do...). --JoSH]