The doom of the Elves is to be immortal, to love the beauty of the world, to bring it to full flower with their gifts of delicacy and perfection, to last while it lasts, never leaving it even when ‘slain’, but returning—and yet, when the Followers come, to teach them, and make way for them, to ‘fade’ as the Followers grow and absorb the life from which both proceed. (L, p. 147)
Immortality is a burden to the elves because, as inhabitants of Middle-earth, they are changeless beings in an ever-changing world. All that they hold dear is destined to fade away, including themselves.
The First Age of Middle-earth ended with the overthrow of the first enemy, Morgoth, and the desolation of the Western lands of Middle-earth. The elves living in Middle-earth at the time were strongly counseled by the Gods to take up residence in Eressëa, an island west of Middle-earth but in sight of Valinor, the original home of the elves. Some elves, however, chose to stay in Middle-earth, for they desired “the peace and bliss and perfect memory of ‘The West’ [their original home in Valinor], and yet to remain on the ordinary earth where their prestige as the highest people, above wild Elves, dwarves, and Men, was greater than at the bottom of the hierarchy of Valinor” (L, p. 151).
The elves that stayed—the Delaying Elves—decided that it was better to rule in Middle-earth than serve in Valinor. They longed for the West, however, and Sauron used this desire to gain their confidence and create the Rings.
In the First Age of Middle-earth, Sauron became the chief captain and servant of Morgoth. After Morgoth was defeated, Sauron was commanded by the Valar to return to Valinor to receive his judgment, but he stayed in Middle-earth and became “a reincarnation of Evil, and a thing lusting for Complete Power—and so consumed ever more fiercely with hate (especially of gods and Elves)” (L, p. 151). To try to bring the elves under his power, he put on a fair appearance and offered his knowledge to help the elves rebuild Middle-earth. He was not admitted to Linden, home of Gil-galad and Elrond, for they distrusted him, even though they didn’t know who he was. But the elves of Eregion were more desirous of improving their lot. Consequently, they succumbed to Sauron’s entreaty:
“But wherefore should Middle-earth remain for ever desolate and dark, whereas the Elves could make it as fair as Eressëa, nay even as Valinor? And since you have not returned thither, as you might, I perceive that you love this Middle-earth, as do I. Is it not then our task to labour together for its enrichment, and for the raising of all the Elven-kindreds that wander here untaught to the height of that power and knowledge which those have who are beyond the Sea?” (S, p. 287)
The prospect of remaking Middle-earth in the image of Valinor proved to be irresistible to the elves of Eregion. They admitted Sauron into their realm and let him share his knowledge with the jewel-smiths of Eregion, and thus the Rings came into being.
The chief power of all the Rings of power, explains Tolkien, was “the prevention or slowing of decay (i.e. ‘change’ viewed as a regrettable thing).” This appealed to the more or less Elvish motive of preserving what is desired or loved, or its semblance. However the Rings also “enhanced the natural powers of a possessor—thus approaching ‘magic’, a motive easily corruptible into evil, a lust for domination” (L, p. 152).
Nowhere was the power of preservation more evident than at the Mound of Amroth in Lothlórien. When the Fellowship reached it,
The others cast themselves down upon the fragrant grass, but Frodo stood awhile still lost in wonder. It seemed to him that he had stepped through a high window that looked on a vanished world. . . . No blemish or sickness or deformity could be seen in anything that grew upon the earth. (FR, p. 393)
The healing effect of the Ring technology stands in stark contrast to the effects of many other technologies, including Asimov’s industrial technology mentioned at the outset. Such technology often has the effect of destroying the countryside or depleting non-renewable natural resources. However, the technology of the elven Rings cannot simply be identified with industrial technology, because the primary purpose of the Rings is to heal and preserve. Industrial technology, on the other hand, serves mainly to produce labor- or time-saving devices. Similarly, the One Ring cannot be identified with the atomic bomb, because it too has none of the Rings’ healing or preservative powers. So there’s reason to take Tolkien at his word and view The Lord of the Rings as an examination of the dangers of placing power in external objects, which, of course, is the danger inherent in all technology.
The Threat of Emerging Technologies
Some of the technologies that we are currently forging will give us unprecedented power to heal and preserve things. But they will also give us the power to destroy the earth and all of its inhabitants. Unlike nuclear technology, they can be created and wielded by small groups of individuals. Consequently, Bill Joy believes they pose a greater threat to mankind than any we have ever faced:
The 21st century technologies—genetics, nanotechnology, and robotics (GNR)—are so powerful that they can spawn whole new classes of accidents and abuses. Most dangerously, for the first time, these accidents and abuses are widely within the reach of individuals or small groups. They will not require large facilities or rare raw materials. Knowledge alone will enable the use of them.
Thus we have the possibility not just of weapons of mass destruction but of knowledge-enabled mass destruction (KMD), this destructiveness hugely amplified by the power of self-replication.
I think it is no exaggeration to say that we are on the cusp of the further perfection of extreme evil, an evil whose possibility spreads well beyond that which weapons of mass destruction bequeathed to the nation-states, on to a surprising and terrible empowerment of extreme individuals.4
Like the Rings, these new technologies can easily fall into the wrong hands, and because there is such a great potential for accident and abuse, Joy believes that the most prudent course of action is to not develop them in the first place. So he favors a ban on all research into these technologies. There are some things, he claims, that we are better off not knowing. To get a sense of the peril and potential of these new technologies, let’s examine one of them—nanotechnology—in more detail.
Nanotechnology, according to Thomas Theis, Director of Physical Sciences at IBM’s Thomas J. Watson Research Center, is “the capability to design and control the structure of an object on all length scales from the atomic to the macroscopic.”5 The size of atoms and molecules is measured in nanometers—billionths of a meter. Thus nanotechnology is the attempt to build devices by directly manipulating the atoms and molecules out of which they are made. This sort of molecular engineering is something that living organisms do every day. The ribosomes in our cells, for example, make proteins by fishing amino acid molecules out of protoplasm and knitting them together in long chains. Eric Drexler reasoned that, in principle, there’s no reason we couldn’t make machines that function like ribosomes. Instead of knitting together amino acids to make proteins, however, he envisioned universal assemblers that could knit together any sort of atom or molecule to create any sort of structure. Since the properties of a thing are determined by the nature and arrangement of its atoms, universal assemblers will essentially give us the ability to create anything that it’s physically possible to create. Drexler explains:
Because assemblers will let us place atoms in almost any reasonable arrangement, they will let us build almost anything that the laws of nature allow to exist. In particular, they will let us build almost anything we can design including more assemblers. . . .With assemblers we will be able to remake our world or destroy it.6
The elves created the Rings because they wanted to remake their world. Nanotechnology promises to give us the same power.
Universal assemblers would make matter replicators of the sort found on the TV series, Star Trek, a reality. Theoretically, we could put the design specifications of any object into an assembler-driven replicator, and as long as it was supplied with enough of the right sort of atoms, the re
plicator would produce it. With enough carbon atoms to work with, for example, such a replicator could create a diamond of any size. But it wouldn’t be limited to just replicating inanimate objects. It could create any possible object, living or non-living, sentient or non-sentient. Thus, genetic engineering and robotics would be greatly enhanced by the advent of universal assemblers.
Like the Ring technology, nanotechnology also promises to eliminate poverty, disease, and old age. With the ability to create any kind of object, no one should have to do without the luxuries of life, much less the necessities. And with the ability to manipulate individual atoms and molecules, no one should have to endure a damaged body. Injury and aging are the result of cellular damage that, in turn, is the result of atoms and molecules becoming displaced. Properly programmed assemblers should be able to repair any sort of cellular damage by putting the displaced atoms back into their original configuration. Once such cell repair machines become available, no one should have to suffer the ravages of old age. As Drexler notes, “With cell repair machines . . . the potential for life extension becomes clear. They will be able to repair cells so long as their distinctive structures remain intact, and will be able to replace cells that have been destroyed.”7 The Rings also grant their wearers extended life, but that life is not a particularly vigorous one. As Bilbo relates to Gandalf:
“I am old, Gandalf. I don’t look it, but I am beginning to feel it in my heart of hearts. Well-preserved indeed!” he snorted. “Why, I feel all thin, sort of stretched, if you know what I mean: like butter that has been scraped over too much bread.” (FR, p. 34)
Whether such weariness is the result of any artificially induced immortality or just that induced by the Rings, only time will tell.
The Rings also have the ability to enhance the powers of their possessors, and all the Rings, with the exception of the elven Rings, had the power to make their wearers invisible. Remarkably enough, the United States government has just given MIT fifty million dollars to use nanotechnology to develop materials that will give soldiers those powers. The goal of the newly developed “Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies” (ISN) is to “create lightweight molecular materials to equip the foot soldier of the future with uniforms and gear that can heal them, shield them, and protect them against chemical and biological warfare.”8 Not only should nanotechnology be able to produce an armor that is stronger than mithril, it should also be able to give its wearer super-human powers. Ned Thomas, Director of the ISN, asks us to “imagine the psychological impact upon a foe when encountering squads of seemingly invincible warriors protected by armor and endowed with super-human capabilities, such as the ability to leap over a twenty-foot wall.”9
Nanotechnology may also allow the creation of a functioning invisibility cloak similar to the car-cloaking technology featured in the recent James Bond flick, Die Another Day. Such a cloak would “interweave existing organic polymers that change the way they reflect light in response to mechanical strains or applied electric fields. . . . these could be combined with a micromechanical sensor array and used to reproduce the light that would pass through if the soldier was not there, creating an effect approaching invisibility.”10 The new technologies thus seem to put almost all of the powers of the Rings within our grasp.
Although the potential benefits of nanotechnology are great, so are the risks. Chief among them are the risks to human, plant, and animal life. Universal assemblers will be able to reproduce themselves—to self-replicate. But a self-replicating assembler could be much more dangerous than any existing virus or bacteria, for it could consume the earth’s organic material in a matter of days. Drexler describes some of the dangers inherent in self-replicating assemblers:
“Plants” with “leaves” no more efficient than today’s solar cells could out-compete real plants, crowding the biosphere with an inedible foliage. Tough, omnivorous “bacteria” could out compete real bacteria. They could spread like blowing pollen, replicate swiftly, and reduce the biosphere to dust in a matter of days.11
This scenario has come to be known as the “grey goo” problem because, if left unchecked, rogue assemblers could transform the surface of the planet into a grey goo, a mass of self-replicating nanobots.
The destruction of all living things is only one of the dangers posed by nanotechnology. Since an assembler can manufacture anything that it is physically possible to produce, it can manufacture any sort of weapon; biological, chemical, or nuclear. Armed with a sufficiently fast replicator, anyone could amass enough firepower or lethal agents to destroy whatever he or she wanted.
Possible Solutions
What can be done to prevent such disasters? Drexler has suggested a number of strategies. One is to contain the replicators behind impenetrable walls or in laboratories in outer space. Another is to build counters into the replicators that only allow them to replicate a limited number of times. A more desperate measure is to try to destroy all the records of how the first assemblers were made so no one else could develop them. Finally we could try to build nanobots designed to destroy dangerous replicators, much like white blood cells destroy dangerous bacteria and viruses.12
Joy finds these proposals naïve, for he believes that they will either be ineffective or create replicators as dangerous as the ones they are intended to destroy. Consequently, he contends that our only hope is to forego further research into these technologies. He writes:
These possibilities are all thus either undesirable or unachievable or both. The only realistic alternative I see is relinquishment: to limit development of the technologies that are too dangerous by limiting our pursuit of certain kinds of knowledge.13
If we don’t limit our pursuit of knowledge, Joy foresees a technological arms race far more dangerous than the nuclear arms race ever was.
Enforcing a ban on research into nanotechnology, genetics, and robotics would require a verification regime of unprecedented proportions. Since such research can be conducted in one’s basement, the only way to prevent it would be to give the government almost unlimited surveillance powers. Relinquishing research into these technologies, then, would require relinquishing a great deal of privacy and freedom. Joy realizes this, but is apparently willing to make the sacrifice for the sake of preventing greater harm.
Would the sacrifice of personal liberty be worth it? Or is Joy’s solution just as undesirable and unachievable as he claims Drexler’s is? Even if the government had a camera in every room—as it did in Orwell’s 1984—it would still probably not be able to prevent research into these technologies because, unlike nuclear research, it does not require centralized control or massive amounts of machinery. And even if we could effectively stop research in America, there’s much less of a possibility of stopping it world wide. Rogue states and terrorist organizations know full well the potential power of these technologies. They would not relinquish research on the basis of any recommendation from the United States or the United Nations. And if they developed those technologies before we did, the United States and the United Nations might cease to exist.
What’s more, relinquishing these technologies would mean that we would not be able to reap any of their benefits. Those suffering from illness or poverty or old age would never be able to avail themselves of the most effective means of dealing with those problems. Foregoing such goods for the sake of a hypothetical harm would be extremely difficult to do.
There is no doubt that these technologies could destroy us. But so could many other technologies, such as nuclear technology. Yet nuclear technology is no longer the threat it used to be. The threat of nuclear war is still with us, but the threat posed by the widespread use of nuclear power has been greatly diminished. When nuclear power was first developed, many pundits thought that it would soon become our dominant power source. But it never achieved that status because various individuals banded together to oppose its proliferation. The anti-nuclear movement, the environmental movement, and the Union of Concerned Scientists, for example, p
layed an important role in restricting the use of nuclear power. The pundits didn’t foresee this opposition because it was a grass roots effort, not one mounted by established institutions.
The case of the nuclear power industry shows that technology doesn’t develop in isolation; it develops in a social context that may affect its utilization in unforeseen ways. Once the public becomes better informed about these technologies, grass roots efforts may serve to tame them in much the same way that they tamed nuclear technology. One of the central themes of The Lord of the Rings is that history can be profoundly affected by “unforeseen and unforeseeable acts of will” (L, p. 160). Even Sauron with his vast intelligence network could not foresee the effect the Fellowship would have on his plans. Bill Joy, with his much more limited resources, can’t be considered to have a clearer view of the future.
In the Third Age of Middle-earth, the elves had lost the knowledge of how to create the Rings. Only Sauron could have forged any new Rings. Destroying the One Ring insured that no new ones would ever be made. This situation is vastly different from the one we face. The knowledge of nanotechnology, genetic engineering, and robotics is spread throughout the world, and although shutting down one set of laboratories might slow their development, it certainly would not stop it. There is no single device we could destroy that would eliminate the threat posed by these technologies. Thus our situation may not be as analogous to that of Middle-earth as it would first appear. If there were other enemies like Sauron with the capability of creating additional Rings of Power, would the Council of Elrond have voted to destroy the One Ring? If dwarves and humans and hobbits had active research programs into Ring technology, would the elves have decided to destroy the most powerful Ring? Perhaps. But they might also have decided to initiate their own research program to see whether there was some way to modify the Ring so that it would retain its powers and be free of Sauron’s evil influence.
The Lord of the Rings and Philosophy Page 4