For ten days I tried to have a dialogue with COIN, beginning by joining the COIN general discussion list and sending the following email.
Subject: Cybernauts Awake Date: Sun, 14 Nov 1999 20:45:55 +0000
From: Nicholas Beale Organization: Sciteb To: general@coin.org.uk
Dear all
I'd just like to emphasise that the co-authors of Cybernauts Awake would really
welcome feedback on the report. Although the printed version is obviously fixed
(and the text had to be largely finalised at the end of last year) the website
(http://www.cybernautsawake.net ) is being continually updated with feedback
as it comes in, so your individual and collective input really will make a difference
(and be acknowledged). Naturally there are things we have had to explain to
the general reader that will seem obvious to many of you, but feedback about
errors or omissions is really more useful than "we knew that already" since
you are far more net-literate than the average Christian and far more Christ-literate
than the average net-user. If all we did was to make things which are obvious
to you clear to the wider community, the report would have achieved something
worthwhile. And, with your help, I hope we can achieve even more than that.
Yours in Christ Nicholas
260 emails later (121 of them relating to cybernauts awake, this is what made me stop having a dialogue with COIN. (Simon is Secretary of COIN and a leading light in it.)
Subject: Re: Morally Neutral - was cybernauts awake! Date: Wed,
24 Nov 1999 17:27:43 +0000 From: Simon Kershaw Organization: speaking
for myself
Nicholas Beale wrote:
Let me just give a few examples of technologies that are
quite conceivable and which are clearly not morally neutral:
a. Gas chambers like those at Auschwitz.
Is the technology of a gas chamber
so different from other uses of gas? Whilst the aplication of this
technology to the gas chamber may be abhorrent the decision to use that technology
was made by people.
b. A drug that selectively aborts girls Assuming for the sake of argument that one might accept the morality of abortion in some circumstances: then such an abortificent (sp?) might be used to abort a foetus carrying some abnormality in a given female line. Obviously the whole issue of selective abortion is a major moral topic. The point here is that a drug such as you describe is not in itself morally evil. That depends on the use to which it is put.
c. A virus designed to kill only (jews/blacks/Hutus ....) Or white middle-aged computer techies perhaps? There alredy are diseases which are more likely to attack some racial groups rather than others. For example, sickle cell anaemia. Is such a disease evil specifically because it attacks some groups rather than others? I don't think so. Now, if we are talking about creating such a virus, then again it is a moral decision made by people.
d. A computer game that contains effective subliminal
conditioning to vote NeoNazi
e. A computer virus to cause Intensive Care systems to malfunction
In these cases too, the moral and ethical decisions are made by the people who
might design and create such things. It is the writer of the software who is
culpable in law and in morality surely?