The article itself, while provocative, would probably not have created the buzz that it did when it appeared in Wired in April 2000, had it been written by a philosopher or social critic.  Bill Joy, however, is an unlikely advocate for limiting technological development.  He is a computer scientist, a technology enthusiast--not just your average geek, but a major league innovator.  Currently chief scientist of Sun Microsystems, Inc., a company he co-founded, he is also one of the developers of the Unix operating system, had a central role in the development of the Java programming language, and holds 44 patents.  He has been called "The Edison of the Internet" by Fortune magazine in a cover story.

Joy holds a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Michigan, and an M.S. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the University of California at Berkeley. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and a recipient of a Smithsonian Computerworld Leadership Award and the Grace Murray Hopper Award of the Association for Computing Machinery.  He served as co-chair of the Presidential Information Technology Advisory Committee (PITAC) under President Bill Clinton.

This is the second in a series of Tidbits of the Week devoted to the authors whose works appear in the just-published 9th edition of Technology and the Future.  In coming weeks, we will profile such other writers on technology as Ziauddin Sardar, Thomas Murray, Amory and Hunter Lovins, John Seely Brown, and President George W. Bush (!).

"Why the Future Doesn't Need Us," by Bill Joy, Wired (April 2000).  The original article.

"Valley to Bill Joy: 'Zzzzzzz,'"by Lakshmi Chaudhry, Wired News (April 5, 2000).  Chaudhry reports that Silicon Valley was not impressed with Joy's thesis.

"Bill Joy's Hi-Tech Warning," by Jason Specht of the Center for the Study of Technology and Society.  Summarizes Joy's argument and the key points of those who disagree.  Includes many links.

"A Conversation with Bill Joy," by Tim O'Reilly on p2p (February 13, 2001).

"Interview with Bill Joy," by Jim Joyce, republished from Unix Review (August 1984, yes 1984).  If you want to know the answers to questions like, "How did vi come about?" or "What is it that Interleaf offers you that EMACS doesn't?" this is place to come.

"Killjoy," by Damien Cave, on Salon.com (April 10, 2000).  "Technology is changing our world -- and we should be afraid! Sun Microsystems chief scientist Bill Joy envisions a frightening future of self-replicating machines."

"The Joy of Computing," a talk given by Bill Joy at a Java developers conference in 1999, posted on Sun's Java site (includes his slides).

"Bill Joy's New Passion: Industrial-Strength P2P," by Erick Schonfeld, Business 2.0 (January 2002).  Can Sun Microsystems create the Windows of peer-to-peer computing?

"Bill Joy: Genomics, Nanotechnology, and Robotics," a 35 minute talk by Joy at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco, CA.  Sponsored by AAAS, the Episcopal Working Group on Science, Technology and Faith and Grace Cathedral (2001).  In RealVideo.

"Bill Joy's Future, by Tammy Lloyd on FutureCompany (South Africa - 21 July 2000).

Bill Joy, Ray Kurzweil, and Sherry Turkle on National Public Radio's Talk of the Nation--Science Friday (March 17, 2000).  A discussion of the consequences of technology in RealAudio.