perfidy

It is perhaps overstating the obvious to say that advancing technology will bring new dangers. What is less obvious, is that advancing technology will require advances in the state of the art of warning signs. Before there were lasers, there was no need for the "Do not look into laser with remaining eye" signs. A hundred years ago, there was no need for the radiation trefoil, the biohazard sign, and so on. When we finally get around to inventing self-replicating nanosystems, devices to modulate spacetime, artificial intelligences and, to be sure, giant fighting robots - well, the humble warning sign will need some upgrades as well.

But fear not! Someone has done the work for us. And that someone is Anders Sandberg.

Mr. Sandberg has thoughtfully and carefully designed a panoply of warning signs for the singularity. Here are some of my favorites: (You can see all of them here.)

The black light bulb for ideas that aren't just bad, but contagiously bad, is effing genius. Likewise, this image just screams that something ominous and desirous of personally introducing you to a naked physical singularity, and not some nerdly rapturous technological singularity.

This sign is fantastic, Sandberg really captures the ominous potentiality of something that isn't merely self-replicating, but remorselessly self-improving. Think hordes of nanoscale Tony Robbinses, getting leaner, meaner, more numerous and more garsh-darn positive every second.

We are already verging very close to needing this sign, especially in areas of downtown London, and soon in Chicago.

And of course, the all-encompassing:

That sort of sums it up, doesn't it?

We owe an enormous debt of gratitude to Mr. Sandberg for instantiating our fears in handy, easy to print warning signs. But he didn't stop there. No, indeedy do. He came up with a further classification scheme to indicate just how dangerous a particular danger is.

A level 0 threat threatens all humanity - imminent danger of species extinction. The number of individuals descends on a log scale to level nine, where only a few people might be endangered, and then down to level 10, "no humans threatened, but other values (such as unchanged biosphere, aesthetics or economy) threatened." He speculates that the colors of the warning signs above might be altered, but that might affect recognition. Instead, you might have the two signs, the warning type sign, and under it a color coded threat level with perhaps some explanatory text. His example is amusing:

SELF-REPLICATING DEVICE. LEVEL 0 THREAT: GLOBAL DANGER. DO NOT MESS WITH

It seems to me that these warning labels pretty much cover most of the likely dangers - excepting of course Cthulhoid elder creatures, homicidal extraterrestrials, and giant fighting robots. Of course, none of these would typically allow anyone to affix a warning label to them, nor would that warning label be of any possible help to anyone confronted by these dangers.

[wik] Found this on the Blogundershlock, as Sandberg's post references an early Schlock Mercenary webstrip, by way of Bruce Schneier's blog.