So i'm at home right now watching the Military channel on Time Warner and this show came on called Futureweapons. I'm not sure if you all are familiar with the show or not, but i'm certain that anyone bothering to read this thread already has some grasp of the money being pumped into military robotics. anyway while they are having some fun remote controlling sniper and machine gun quasi-autonomous robots around and shooting up targets they keep reassuring the show's viewers that there is nothing to be too concerned about, these machines are not intelligent enough to pose much of a danger(ala terminator, matrix, and robocop), they make great pains to stress that the machines always have someone behind the controls who is a live breathing person. first off, why would the fact that there is a person(maybe miles away) controlling the killing machine make me feel more secure? he's in no danger from me, but i at his mercy... secondly, they are only quasi-autonomous at this time. Nothing says these things are going to stay that way. in fact everything we now about the industrial-tech advancement shows that these things will tend to become cheaper to produce, faster, smarter, stronger and rely on that person with the joystick less and less. Are these people idiots? Do they just not comprehend the danger posed by taking more and more control away from the soldier and giving that control over to the weapon? quite the contrary. Ask yourself: what is one of the safegaurds against a total government crackdown and implemented fascism in a free country? I'll tell you. Human Soldiers. While a soldier can generally be considered a hired and brainwashed merc for the state, keep in mind he still has a family and friends, loves, fears, hungers, despairs. PTSD shows that the human mind can only take so much battlefield stress, can only be pushed so far and can only be inticed to committ and certain degree of destruction. in other words unreliable(not loyalty but obedience). They've tried everything they can to desensitize these guys about the act of killing(think of your favorite FPS as combat training). Machines don't love, dont fear, dont have nerve endings to tell it something is painful, dont have a conscienceto tell it that an order is immoral, no stomach to feed, no need for sleep, it doesn't get stressed, it isnt human. machines have no problem quelling a riot with maximum force, with putting down a student demonstration, with burning a village. it is the perfect soldier because it is literally nothing more that a very very reliable weapon. Now many say that's just fear mongering and these things are not capable of any of that. Yeah, and we couldn't fit an orchestra into the palm of our hands, speak to 5 different people on 5 different continents in real time, couldn't split atoms and couldn't travel at 280mph, couldn't fly, couldn't cook a meal (if you want to call that shit food) in less than 1 min using microwave radiation. Tech grows exponentially. Tech only grows in one direction, military tech is no different.
Thats some scary shit, I definatly don't agree with using robots for most of the same reasons you gave. Unfortunatly they will most likely be able to do what ever they want with the tech because it would be VERY easy to spin it in the media.
Hey man, I'm more worried about human beings evolving into robots than them building robots, or whatever it's called when you put a robot together. The robot race, that's us. Some of us could care less whether we are human or not as long as we can continue to live in lala land and be comfortable. I think it's already in the cards, the human race is becoming the robot race, and you can't stop those f@*%ers no how, all you can do is resist it/them for as long as you are alive.
America's Robot Army another stepping stone toward the Technological Singularity Click here to read the rest of the article Scary shit! related: Connect Your Brain To The Internet? One day we will all happily be implanted with microchips, a generation is all they need... A Singular Rapture Technotopia and the Death of Nature: Clones, Supercomputers, and Robots
The Simpsons hit the nail squarely on the head in 1997 in there last episode of season 8. The show is much more relevant than most give it credit for. In its earlier seasons, it actually had some nice political satire for those patient enough to look for the subtle hints. Anywho, The wars of the future will not be fought on the battlefield or at sea. They will be fought in space, or possibly on top of a very tall mountain. In either case, most of the actual fighting will be done by small robots. And as you go forth today remember always your duty is clear: To build and maintain those robots. Thank you. -- Military school Commandant's graduation address, "The Secret War of Lisa Simpson"
Back in the early 70s there was a movie called West World where robots at an old west amusement park roamed the joint. One of them went off on his own and started a shooting spree. We should send the politicians and military off on some island and let them all play their war games. And do it on their own money instead of ours. .
Once humans are implanted with the brain chip, THEY will be robots. I think a lot of this is just conditioning us for that. A lot of this is propaganda aimed at breaking down the distinction between human and robot. This was written about long ago, especially by people like Zbigniew Brzezinski back in the 1970s. Post #4 has the right idea. The goal of the Elite is to create a society of people who cannot reason for themselves, where all individuality will be stripped from them. It will be just like the Borg.
We already have iron in our bodies, how did it get there? I don't know why we have iron in our bodies, but it must have helped us adapt to something at some time. So, why couldn't we develop into cyborgs, (I think that's the word for it), as a result of some evolutionary process? How do you know it is not happening now? Do you think anyone could measure a process like that. Personally I don't want to become a robot. I like being human, but it's possible that human beings are becoming an endangered species, and it's possible that we may become dependent for our survival on these "things" that were once human but have evolved into something else, robots? I'm not talking about implanted chips.
