It is not something new. All we know the free market mantra that _too big_ companies are not viable. I also remember that Carl Sagan's "Cosmos" central point was that it is the technology that dramatically reduces the probability of intelligent life (and that is why we cannot find any aliens around). Even our owners (the friends of Gates couple), remind us about of the same dangers or overpopulation in the face of resource depletion, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bI0fnRbhHFo. What is new to me is the linear growth of morality. Why?

I see that people are simply becoming more ignorant on the basis that they do not need to study the nature and technology because technology already provides everything to them and, furthermore, and, furthermore, defend their ignorance saying that the technology is so far ahead of the morality that we need to harmonize our relationships better rather than learn (that is, advance) the technology. Modern people do not understand that you cannot distinguish between good and bad and decide what to do with your technology if you are illiterate.

Might be the letter author refers to the linear IQ growth. Ok, but this also concerns me because we have stifled the natural selection with our advances in medicine and improved quality standards, which allow to survive and reproduce anybody whereas only 2/10 did reproduce yet 100 years ago. Since we did not replace the natural selection with artificial one, the biological quality (aka our genome) of new generations is degrading (you believe the opposite, right?), http://biology.stackexchange.com/questions/7686. I propose to solve this problem not letting the inferior comrades to die but paying for the services with the reproduction right: if you are genetically unhealthy and, thus, take more from the society than give to it, you should let to produce people to the other, those who maintain the civilization and advance the technology. This is in your interest.

The article speaks a lot about possible misuse of the technology. But the most astounding fact is that the civilized nations have the technology to organize the comfortable live efficiently, but use it to kill the nature on the daily basis and do not notice it!

But I can tell you how you is personally guilty abusing the technology every day: The technology allows you to burn all the precious resources very fast and this is considered as a good thing. The freedom culture and technology gives you cheap gasoline, car and house and I bet that you believe that you are absolutely sure that this is good to have a personal house, separate from the others and waste more because more waste is more consumption, better economy and greener world. Thereby, you hate the consumerism. However, this is the car-house based infrastructure that costs the most to you and to the nature. Once you condense the population into apartments in multifloor buildings, as it was practiced in the Eastern Block, for instance, the resource consumption (lands, for transportation, heating, lighting, and building/maintaining the infrastructure) reduce 10-100 times and we'll fit into the ecological footprint. This is how how you can we make the life of 10 billion sustainable. The 10-100 savings are achieved since the average distances are shrinked dramatically, which, per se allows huge savings but additional savings are because you can use more effective (i.e. public) systems of heating and transportation - sharing the resources as consumers, which contributes another order of magnitude. You can even compost in the New York city apartment, http://sustainability.stackexchange.com/a/2402/476. We can even use trains for inter-city travels instead of planes. Trains do not consume the energy whereas our favorite planes are the paramounts of ineficciency. This way we could reduce carbon emissions, save fuels and stop global dimming. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_dimming#Probable_causes. Yet, we wont, right? There are certainly bad people who can use terrible technology for bad and we better write Bill Gates about them. We have a right to be independent, self-reliant, live in a private house and spend a fair amount of gasoline.

I like the communist preaching telling that we should stop consumerism, greediness and other drivers of capitalist hell and turn to sympathy, concern for the others, unfamiliar and the rational social planning environment. I even think robots should do the same, cooperate rather than fight for their egoistic interests. What I do not like is that you remove the part predicting that we'll have consciousness people who will stop wasting lands in 2014 from the Isaak Asimov interview (compare http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/03/23/lifetimes/asi-v-fair.h... and what you have in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6995644). I see quite the opposite to what seen the futurist. Our passion to have a house is strong as usually. It is expedited by the technology and housing bubble , we build ever more cottages and urban spawls (enjoy their sights http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_sprawl). So, when you speak about some adversaries that will use technology for bad, can I look at you? I always look at you because you are the that criminal.

Do you keep up with the morality to understand what I am talking about? If you do, ask the Gates couple to free the green lands from your houses and roads, moving all activity into the dense, 3D cities.