>>Boy Soldiers, who made shit happen for the Empire/Reich/Congress so that
>>Everyone could be Safe and Happy? [Excused the rant, sometimes The System
>
>I don't know if I'll excuse the rant. It's too easy being technophobic. All
>you have to do is to appeal to the fact that "no-one really likes boring
I guess the caution of African-English sarcasm went unnoticed? Not to worry .. that's the problem with email .. one has no choice but to make whatever assumptions one can.
There's a chap who went by the name of Buckminster Fuller who says everything I could ever want to say about managing technology responsibly, and a lot more interestingly in a short book called "Grunch of Giantsd". I strongly urge anyone who lives on this planet to read it anyway. It's about 60 pages printed. Just as Fuller predcited in 1981, the ramp up in military spending caused a world awash in overly smart kick-ass weapons, and regardless of how it's driving the current technological wave, which is a good thing IMO, it's not possible to simply disregard the serious problems that are occuring out there. Here's the link .. it's a highly recommeded read that costs nothing except an hour or two of your time: http://www.bfi.org/grunchofgiants2.html
But who's or which quarter is going to drive such a thing into existence, let alone siphon off military spending, is the $1T question. So when it comes to *constructive* uses of technology, I'm all for seriously huge investment in R&D for space industries such as asteroid mining, exploring Mars and a whole bunch of places that I could be doing right, 30 years after my grandfather assured me I'd also be going to the Moon one day .. it was inevitable. Not! ZWe seem to be able to keep that $1T flowing each year and drum up stupendous amounts of cash in the high-tech industries, but not much is atteniton is given to technology that makes SENSE and not just money.
IMO too many people in my generation (I'm 34) have not experienced war sufficiently close enough to really hate it .. and that is almost a problem in a horribly bizarre kind of way. I happen to hate it due to spending a few years of my life fighting one here in Africa for a non-sensical non-cause embedded in the law. Watching the war on TV has long since lost it's novelty value, regarldess of trhe cause (and this is not the place to debate the Balkans). War is not something that can be philosophised about and reduced to mathematical theory. It's the most *stupid* thing still in existence and sticking one's head in the sand is only going to ensure one's lack of survival if the shit hit the fan generally.
However as the 60s pretty much showed, ranting and raving will not help .. the soldiers of the world will not go away and it would be a diseasterous error to make them go away, and the reality is that most soldier are indeed apolitcal and don't sign up because of violent tendencies only, but also because of long and honourable family tradition which cannot just be disregarded in the real world.
However, soldiers can be also be deployed as instructors and teachers of livingry technologies, as Fuller calls it, in places that need it most. Not just used in Armed Peacekeeping roles, but in Micro-Industry Economy Building roles. The "have nots" need to be taught how they can make themselves "21st century haves" without destroying their millenia old cultures, as has been the problem throughtout the past 500 years. Technology should not just be driven by IPO greed and military demand, which is pretty much the case now, IMO.
The only thing that can be done that could just weork is to somehow stimulate the growth of a "livingry technology" industry ... as Fuller would probably have done had been able to keep going for 160 years. But he unfortunately died in 1983. I think he was 88. Check out http://www.bfi.org .. Buckminister Fuller was an incredible man, worth telling your friends about.
Just IMO.
Dave