Djinn are powerful inhabitants of Islamic cosmology who were made from smokeless fire. They are the only beings in Allah’s creation other than humans to possess free will.
Smokeless fire? Electricity? If artificial intelligence is allowed to continue along its present developmental trajectory, perhaps the Djinn will reemerge from the sands of Arabic mythology to inhabit the silicone of electronic circuitry.
You can’t put the genie back in the bottle, or so the cliché goes. You can’t reverse technological “progress” once it has happened. And, besides, who would want to? Who would want to go back to a world without cell phones and robotic aircraft and video pornography on demand? Who would want to go back to a world without touch screens and debit cards and airport body scanners? Who would want to go back to a world with an intact ozone layer and thriving ecosystems? Who besides a muddle-headed anarcho-primitivist would want to go back to a time when life was a direct, unmediated, human experience?
Maybe it’s true. Maybe we can’t put the genie back in the bottle. But that doesn’t mean that we are doomed to live as helpless, dehumanized victims of our own technology. Just because we can’t put the genie back doesn't mean that we can't destroy the bottle.
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