Microsoft Word Kurzweil, Ray The Singularity Is Near doc

Chapter Eight: The Deeply Intertwined Promise and Peril of GNR 
1.
Bill McKibben, "How Much Is Enough? The Environmental Movement as a Pivot Point in Human 
History," Harvard Seminar on Environmental Values, October 18, 2000. 
2.
In the 1960s, the U.S. government conducted an experiment in which it asked three recently 
graduated physics students to build a nuclear weapon using only publicly available information. 
The result was successful; the three students built one in about three years 
(http://www.pimall.com/nais/nl/n.nukes.html). Plans for how to build an atomic bomb are available 
on the Internet and have been published in book form by a national laboratory. In 2002, the British 
Ministry of Defence released measurements, diagrams, and precise details on bomb building to the 
Public Record Office, since removed (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/1932702.stm). Note that these 
links do not contain actual plans to build atomic weapons. 
3.
"The John Stossel Special: You Can't Say That!" ABC News, March 23, 2000. 
4.
There is extensive information on the Web, including military manuals, on how to build bombs, 
weapons, and explosives. Some of this information is erroneous, but accurate information on these 
topics continues to be accessible despite efforts to remove it. Congress passed an amendment (the 
Feinstein Amendment, SP 419) to a Defense Department appropriations bill in June 1997, banning 
the dissemination of instructions on building bombs. See Anne Marie Helmenstine, "How to Build 
a Bomb," February 10, 2003, http://chemistry.about.com/library/weekly/aa021003a.htm. 
Information on toxic industrial chemicals is widely available on the Web and in libraries, as are 
information and tools for cultivating bacteria and viruses and techniques for creating computer 
viruses and hacking into computers and networks. Note that I do not provide specific examples of 
such information, since it might be helpful to destructive individuals and groups. I realize that even 
stating the availability of such information has this potential, but I feel that the benefit of open 
dialogue about this issue outweighs this concern. Moreover, the availability of this type of 
information has been widely discussed in the media and other venues. 
5.
Ray Kurzweil, 
The Age of Intelligent Machines
(Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1990). 
6.
Ken Alibek, 
Biohazard
(New York: Random House, 1999). 
7.
Ray Kurzweil, 
The Age of Spiritual Machines
(New York: Viking, 1999). 
8.
Bill Joy, "Why the Future Doesn't Need Us," 
Wired
, April 2000, 
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/8.04/joy.html. 
9.
Handbooks on gene splicing (such as A. J. Harwood, ed., 
Basic DNA and RNA Protocols
[Totowa, 
N.J.: Humana Press, 1996]) along with reagents and kits that enable gene splicing are generally 
available. Even if access to these materials were limited in the West, there are a large number of 
Russian companies that could provide equivalent materials. 

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10.
For a detailed summary site of the "Dark Winter" simulation, see "DARK WINTER: A 
Bioterrorism Exercise June 2001": http://www.biohazardnews.net/scen_smallpox.shtml. For a brief 
summary, see: http://www.homelandsecurity.org/darkwinter/index.cfm. 
11.
Richard Preston, "The Specter of a New and Deadlier Smallpox," 
New York Times
, October 14, 
2002, available at http://www.ph.ucla.edu/epi/bioter/specterdeadliersmallpox.html. 
12.
Alfred W. Crosby, 
America's Forgotten Pandemic: The Influenza of 1918
(New York: Cambridge 
University Press, 2003). 
13.
"Power from Blood Could Lead to 'Human Batteries,' "