I think option number three is a very good topic for discussion. Both Joy and Lyotard seem to have a pretty good understanding of technology, although their views on understanding the future through technology varies.
Lyotard’s view of the posthuman future is somewhat optimistic. I say somewhat because it discusses a way to keep human thought without the existance of humans, but the problem is that we cannot reproduce human thought exactly. On the other hand Bill Joy’s view is a grim one.
In Joy’s essay Why the Future Doesn’t Need Us, his view of the future doesn’t look good for humans. He believes that technology will be our downfall. As a computer scientist he still wants to move forward with technology, but he still seems to think that robots and technology will soon grow beyond our control. On page 18, Thoreau asks the questions “Which is to be master? Will we survive our technologies?” Though the article has a dystopian view of the future, technology is done to make our lives easier. We are progressing to make robots that can do work for us, which makes for an easier life for almost everyone. Other technologies such as genetic engineering are researched to help us live longer through creating healthier plants and better medicine and antibiotics. These technologies seem to be good for the human race, but as the technology evolves so do the viruses that the antibiotics were created for.
Coming back to the idea of robots, Joy thinks that it is a very conceivable idea and that they are coming very soon. On page 106 he says that the possibility of creating an intelligent robot could happen by 2030. With these intelligent robots, we must now ask how intelligent will they become? Will they start self replicating and come to realize that they do not need us? If you wanted to ask Joy, I think the title of the essay will be good enough to answer that question.
Even though Joy looks at the future in an almost lose-lose situation, he does bring up the idea of downloading our human consciousnesses into computers. With this idea on page 107, he asks the question, “What are the chances that we will thereafter be ourselves or even human?” That question is asked by Lyotard in Can Thought go on without a Body?
This question isn’t completely answered, but it seems to be discussed by between the HE and SHE sections of the essay. The HE part believes that downloading the idea of thought into a machine will preserve human existence into the future, well beyond our destruction. On the other hand, the SHE side seems to think that it is a good idea, but that we cannot replicate human thought without suffering. While SHE does not think it will be the same, it seems to be the only way to survive. HE comes to the conclusion that humans are just like computers. On page 13 HE says “The body might be considered the hardware of the complex technical device that is human thought.” HE believes that putting human thought into a piece of hardware is the only way to survive, which is better than not surviving at all.
Their views of the future differ in such a way that Lyotard believes that technology will save us, whereas Joy believes that technology will quite possibly be our destruction.