Here’s a lecture that’s worth watching: Military Robots and the Future of War, presented by P. W. Singer. (Check out my interview with Singer on the Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy podcast.) A key excerpt:
Mankind’s five thousand year old monopoly on the fighting of war is breaking down in our very lifetime. I spent the last several years going around meeting with all the players in this field, from the robot scientists to the science fiction authors who inspired them to the 19-year-old drone pilots who are fighting from Nevada … The kinds of things that we used to only talk about at science fiction conventions like Comic Con have to be talked about in the halls of power, and places like the Pentagon. A robots revolution is upon us.
Hey, you know what would be awesome? How about if people in the halls of power and in places like the Pentagon started thinking about the implications of new technology as seriously as people at Comic Con before those technologies actually got built. Maybe even decades before. Is that so hard? I guess maybe it is, considering the willful ignorance of so many people in our halls of power, who are still trying to wrap their heads around 19th-century science (say, evolution) or 20th-century science (say, global warming) let alone 21st-century science.
Anyway, here are two of the many new technologies touched on in this lecture:
 The PHASR. Downside: Likely to Mostly Be Used on People Complaining About Their Rights Being Taken Away. Upside: Looks Really Freaking Rad |
 Virtual Reality Ball: Because Why Should Gerbils Get to Have All the Fun? |
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