QUESTION:
Is technology necessarily bad?

BRYAN:
Clearly there are some cases, say poison gas, where technology is simply bad but there are others where is it ambiguous, for example: the atom bomb. It may seem to be obviously bad, but on the other hand it may well have been instrumental in keeping the peace in Europe for 50 years.

HHAWK:
If people are free of spirit; free to follow their own arts and sports (from paint by numbers to fine oil painting, etc), and free to love as they want, to travel as they want, they are free. Agree or disagree? And if we are free, then as a species are we not good?

BRYAN:
I don't accept that we will necessarily be good if we are free, and it is very difficult to simply define freedom in terms of a massive amount of choice. Equally important are the terms with which one makes such choices. For example: one needs to know certain types of language in order to make certain types of choice, but if a language only allows you to think in certain ways which I think is happening now, then you will not be free to make alternative choices.

TOM:
Is, or rather should, science be an entirely neutral concept free of the weights of ethics and allowed to explore or should every scientist consider all moral implications before they start.

BRYAN:
I think the idea of science as value neutral has been overused, obviously it needs to be value neutral if it is to explore the natural world but this is merely a technical matter, no scientist can be value neutral in himself and I think the minute you move from the basic act of doing science then you are implicated in the human world of values.

NICKBEALE:
Your first article suggested (wrongly) that science had made it harder to believe in God. But now you suggest that 'faith in the future' is vapid and only love if God and neighbour can endure and give meaning to life. Comments?

BRYAN:
Science does not make belief in God impossible, many scientists have been, and are, believers. However, practice science has cut away successively at the foundations of belief so that fewer people find it possible to be believers, this creates a crisis of values which science itself is incompetent to resolve.

LUMPKIN:
Why do you put such value on the past? Pre-20th century life was absolutely appalling for the vast majority of ppl.

BRYAN:
I think 20th Century life has been even more appalling for even more people, more people have died through human cruelty in the 20th Century than any preceding century. Of course there is no doubt that we have greater material comforts and longer lives, but these are meaningless without some sense of what we are and how we came here. That sense is, I think, threatened by the cultural climate in which we live.

QUESTION:
If technology means that anything is achievable, will we no longer know such emotions as desire?

BRYAN:
The short answer is, I don't know. The point behind your question is that we can effectively mechanise out of emotional existence. I think such a thing is possible and I think it is perfectly possible to abandon emotion simply by adopting a culture that is unable to tell us how to feel.

SIF:
Is it human morality pre-20th century that interests you, or the general structure of society?

BRYAN:
The point is that we have to live in the shadow of the past, I do not believe there is any other way to live. Therefore what I am interested in is not necessarily the goodness or badness of the past, but rather in the way in which we incorporate it in to our lives today. I suppose that means I am interested in all aspects of the past, but mostly what it can teach us now.

SID:
Can the internet impede on development by making people too lazy?

BRYAN:
This is something that a lot of people have said. I personally use the internet quite a lot and I do think it creates illusory communities that lack the felt of nature of real communities, whether it makes them lazy I don't know. It certainly makes me work harder.

TOM:
Do you think we do learn anything from the past, or do we just repeat the same mistakes?

BRYAN:
I think we have to learn from the past, especially now when we are living in the aftermath of two terrible failed experiments (nazi and communism). The lessons from those awful episodes are that we must never again be tempted into devaluing the moral absolute of the human self.

AK:
The imperfect cannot create perfection, it can only strive towards improving itself ? Comments?

BRYAN:
I am certainly not trying to create perfection, and the desire of perfection whether in the mind of the Spanish inquisition, or of Lenin, tends to produce a lot of dead bodies. I don't really know what perfection would be, but I do know it is a dangerous goal.

SIGI:
Manipulating genes is like manipulating the distortion of the mirror we look into. So what image we like to see? Ethics will be denied afterwards, if changes are that dramatic. What do you think?

BRYAN:
This is an important point because we are now on the verge of being able to change ourselves fundamentally. I do not believe we have the knowledge or moral capacity to do that effectively, nor do I think we could ever have. I think it is perfectly possible that we could make ourselves less human by simply eliminating characteristics which some interested party decided were undesirable.

TOM:
The pope recently apologised for the Spanish inquisition. In the future will someone have to apologise for cloning? Both are routes to perfection (or are thought to be).

BRYAN:
I hope they won't have to apologise for human cloning because I hope it won't happen. If it does, then I can foresee terrible dangers.

AK:
Surely to be 'good' man needs a conscience. Technology in itself does not possess this. Your opinion?

BRYAN:
Of course, that is exactly what I am saying. I think we have become too hypnotised by the power of technology and we are abandoning our ability to make decisions about the future, simply leaving what happens next to the technocrats.

SIF:
Isn't human cloning now an inevitability? With the prices that people are willing to pay surely it cannot now be stopped?

BRYAN:
I think you are right. I think the important point here is that even if one or many countries ban it, it will be available in others because we live in a global economy. Saying it is wrong may be a waste of time, nevertheless it needs to be said.

SIGI:
So what is called ethics will change in a fundamental way (if we go into genetic manipulation fundamentally)? If so what use has discussing future then (except for making some people afraid of it)?

BRYAN:
We have to discuss the future because it is how we understand the present, by imagining the outcomes of our actions. I understand your point that if changes are going to be so fundamental there is little that we can say about them, but we have a responsibility to confront the possibilities in those changes.

LUMPKIN:
Do you have any realistic and practical proposals for how to remedy humanity's current predicament?

BRYAN:
My own task has become one of simply drawing people's attention to the scale of the issues that are at stake, I don't pretend to offer policies or proposals because I admit to being unsure about what they would be other than perhaps educating children more broadly in the history of ideas.

I think perhaps the best solution I can think of is that everybody should sit quietly for 15 minutes everyday and think.

SID:
Do you think the UN will be able to stop development of weapons technology i.e. nuclear viz the recent tests in India and Pakistan?

BRYAN:
No, I don't. I think in many ways the post cold war period is more dangerous than the cold war itself. I do not think, as some do, that the triumph of liberal democracy has put an end to fundamental conflicts. We must continue to act on the basis that human beings are capable of doing terrible things to each other.

AMICK:
With CCTV, commercially vested interests and our subtly narrowing range of media ownership, aren't we getting closer to Orwell's 1984 than your article suggests?

BRYAN:
This is a good point. Twenty years ago if you had told people that they would be observed continually by automatic cameras, they would have protested at what would seem to be a big brother society, but we quietly accepted this in the name of reducing crime.

I think this is a very, very serious and fundamental change in our sense of how our society should be and it indicates how technology can transform our values without anybody actually noticing.

QUESTION:
Could we still be labelled 'human' if we are built to order - is it more correct to name us as machines?

BRYAN:
Yes, I think so. We have become so used to think of our brains as computers and our bodies as engineering that we can now start to think of ourselves entirely as machines. This is an abuse of language because what the word 'machine' should mean is something that is not human, but such abuses are common place.

SIF:
If cloning is going to happen, surely we need to deal with the issues it will present now, rather than just saying that we do not wish it to happen, or to have to deal with the results of cloning.

BRYAN:
Perhaps, but it seems to be important to say first of all that the impact is likely to be bad. Simply to discuss a hypothetical world as if it were inevitable, makes it inevitable. I think there are terrible moral issues arising from cloning. That is why we have to think of ways of persuading people that it shouldn't happen.

HHAWK:
I fall to understand why cloning is bad. There are natural clones all around us.

BRYAN:
There are natural clones all around us in the forum of identical twins, but there is a world of difference between that and the intentional creation of clones. For example, there is also a lot of murder in the world but that does not mean that doing a few more is reasonable.

QUESTION:
How much would 'human altering' cost - would it be available on the NHS?

BRYAN:
It depends what kind of altering you mean, I think certain genetic treatments will be available on the NHS but not ones that simply improve people, only those that had some impact on disease.

SIF:
Surely if we are capable of experiencing "higher" emotions, we will never be machines.

BRYAN:
I agree, but if we stop ourselves experiencing those emotions we will be less than human, read Aldus Huxley.

SIF:
Which books?

BRYAN:
'Brave New World'

ANGEL2:
Do you think cloning would add to the separating classes i.e. the rich become a master race because they can afford to genetically modify their children

BRYAN:
This is a good question. Genetic technology will be socially divisive in a number of ways. Cloning in one way, but also the availability of expensive genetic treatments allowing the rich to improve their offspring. These will not be available to the poor and they will certainly not be available to the poorest regions of the world. I think inequality will be increased by genetic technology.

HHAWK:
Why should we want to stay Human? Don't we want to evolve into a new trans-human species?

BRYAN:
I can't imagine what such a species would be. I think we have accustomed ourselves through science fiction to believing in super-human entities. But since, as far as we know, we are the only conscience value-giving creatures in nature, I find it impossible to imagine what a superior being would be like.

QUESTION:
How will 'human altering' affect religious beliefs?

BRYAN:
I suspect the religious will incorporate the idea into their beliefs, but for others it will be one more piece of evidence that we can become our own God.

SIF:
What is your image of utopia?

BRYAN:
I do not have one because utopias tend to be dangerous things, however my image of a better world would be one in which mutual respect from the simplest encounter in the street to the highest levels of politics would be acknowledged.

HOST:
Thank you for your questions, and now a final word from Bryan.

BRYAN:
I apologise for being late but the technology of which I have been warning you of has let me down briefly!

Thank you for all your questions, as I said my sole intention is to encourage deeper thought and that seems to have worked today.