Fifty years of efforts to prevent the proliferation of nuclear and biological weapons have succeeded only in slowing it. It would be wrong to conclude that nothing can be done. Yet it would mark an advance if we could give up the humanist illusion that technology is just a tool, which we can use as we will. The belief that we can make machines our servants is not a product of science but a relic of magic. In truth, neither the liberating effects of new technologies nor their horrifying risks will ever be under the control of the human will.
Humans are no more masters of their machines than they are of the Earth.
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