I support you in your efforts to see that the machines do not
   destroy civilization and the way to do that is to make sure
   everything's in place with the people who are putting those
   things into play now, with proper education, training, etc.

   Bit of a pot-shot with the Climate Change there but I suppose I
   deserved it. tongue emoticon

   It's hard for me (likely due to youthful influencers Joseph
   Campbell among others) to not see even IJ Good - who is very
   inspirational indeed, as but an extension of a short story.
   [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Question which, when
   all is said, is a very religious work of Asimov and has inspired
   MANY MANY computer scientists, philosophers and engineers
   through the past 60 years.

   Fact is inspired by fiction. I suppose there is no other way to
   proceed really. NASA was inspired by Verne; they enacted much of
   his vision, and the NASA teams of the to-the-moon days seemed to
   all have read Verne as children, which inspired them to go into
   aerospace in the first place.

   Similarly, Asimov would have inspired Good and then Kurzweil who
   is now inspiring millions, and I'm actually really glad; again,
   I always liked the guy.

   I remember when his ideas were considered "kooky"; I was active
   in sci-systems, alt.info-theory, comp.ai back in 1990/91 and a
   little bit beyond (although newsgroup access was difficult once
   I left school but I tried my best), and Kurzweil's ideas were
   somewhat "fringe" at the time.

   I kinda gave up on AI after a couple of years though, as
   research and development floundered entirely - parallel
   processing was dead, and nobody KNEW what Wolfram was going to
   come up with.

   I loved the idea of cellular autonoma; like little sewing
   machines knitting reality through algorithms; I'd dream of
   reality being knitted anew via computers.

   I suppose what you see, John Alley - is a bit of a jilted
   idealist. I _want_ - *want* - _want_ to believe. But everything,
   including the computers and programs we make, are all-too-human.

   I'm jealous, I suppose. I hope you continue in your quest, and
   keep getting inspired by other AI enthusiasts for a transhuman
   cybernetic future. I let my idealism fade off; the push and pull
   of life and watching project after another with promises of a
   better tomorrow, flounder and fall after great promise.

   I've seen great successes too; and I'm lucky to have been a part
   of them; my dreams of a pocket computer that everybody in the
   world could use to access any library ever known to man from
   when I was 11 years old...

   ...we have smartphones! I got to see my dreams come true.

   So many dreams came true of mine. In fact, over 80% of my
   childhood dreams of technological futures have come true so far
   and I can't wait to see what's next.

   But it's hard to get on board entirely. I can't see white hats
   of technological goodness without seeing greedy middle
   management black hats, or disgruntled overeducated, financially
   strapped lonely individuals taking advantage of the idealistic
   notions being put into play and wreaking havoc in order to
   fulfill a revenge against what they felt were empty promises
   given to them as children about a "better tomorrow".

   I suppose that's the danger I see. "Hey kids, here's a better
   tomorrow!" "Yay". They grow up. "Where is it?" "Oh, we're
   working on it, just punch the timecard and your great-grandkids
   will see it".

   I'm not trying to take away from the need to push forward and
   continue... I guess it's just hard to not see the systems behind
   the systems of the systems and the unseen systems that will
   intersect with the systems wrecking them from underneath while
   they're looking up at the clouds.

References

   Visible links
   1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Question