the deeper approuch to the technology dilemma

Discussion in 'Science & Society' started by ak.R, Mar 19, 2008.

  1. ak.R Registered Member

    Messages:
    41
    what is you opinion on that:
    Israeli futurologist predicts terror horror
    Run for the hills
    By Mark Ballard Published Thursday 21st June 2007 14:34 GMT

    Western nations have less than 20 years to prepare for the next generation of terror threats, according to Dr Yair Sharan, director of Tel Aviv University's Interdisciplinary Centre for Technology Analysis and Forecasting. These could consist of suicide bombers remote-controlled by brain-chip implants and carrying nano-technology cluster bombs, or biological compounds for which there is no antidote. It is hard to imagine how we are supposed to prepare for such a future, but Sharan, who presented his dire predictions to an audience of spook industry bigwigs last week, has some idea about what the US and its allies should do about it. "Europe is naive with its love of privacy," he told The Register. "It's the weak point in the chain." The spook industry is already doing its best to prepare for the worst, and gaining a sense of history about what it is doing. Sharan's take on geopolitics can only put wind in their sails: "Why should we be more worried about death today?" he said at the Royal United Services Institute conference on Homeland Security last week. We get a better-educated class of terrorists these days, he told the conference, while sci/tech advances can quickly find their way into irresponsible hands, or "proliferate" through the forces of globalisation. Not only that, technology is always smaller and cheaper, making it inevitable that bad people are going to get their hands on some bad-ass weaponry. Most bizarre of all his predictions is "the recruitment of huge numbers of suicidal candidates - human bombs - by mind control techniques". Brain chip implants could create a more obedient servant than conventional techniques like hypnosis: "Imagine that this suicide bomber is remote controlled and cannot give up, even if he wants," warned Sharan. This might be some way off, though - Sharan estimated it would be more than 10 years. Within five years, however, we might be faced with terrorists armed with powerful new explosives delivered by robot. Even remote controlled toys might be used to deliver dangerous payloads into crowded places like supermarkets, he said. Some of these payloads, also conceivably within five years, would be constructed using radical nanotechnology that could produce something called the MOAB, or Mother of All Bombs. Nanotechnology, which is made using components one billionth of a metre across, might also give terrorists the means to release malicious nanobots into people's bloodstreams. Terrorists might also get their hands on new biotechnology that could give them powerful new weapons. "Imagine anthrax that would stand against antibiotics," he said. "It's possible to do that - to build a new kind of anthrax that would be resistant. It was done by Russia - the knowledge is there and might fall into the hands of terrorists."Sharan said we should also worry about terrorists getting their hands on cluster bombs. Now where might they have got that idea.
     
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  3. Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

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    My opinion is that this is something an Israeli would say, because the Israelis and Palestinians are locked into an escalating cycle of mutual terrorism. Of course the future looks bleak from his vantage. His government is criminally incompetent and can't find a way out of this mess. To be fair it was the British who started the cycle by "giving" the Jews somebody else's country, but it's their problem now and they're not trying very hard to solve it. Any Jew who talks about launching a shoah against another people should be excommunicated.

    From my vantage... well my government is criminally incompetent too, not to mention guilty of treason for protecting its friends the Saudis from punishment for 9/11, but America is less of a theocracy and more of a democracy than Israel and we get to throw the assholes out next year. Once we stop sending Christian soldiers to overthrow Muslim governments (at least governments that did us no harm) I think the terrorist threat to our people will decline.

    Even if it doesn't, well 140,000 of us have been killed by drunk drivers since the start of this century, compared to 3,000 killed by terrorists. Unless the terrorists get hold of a nuclear weapon and manage not to blow themselves up in the process, they are not much of a threat compared to our own people. Or I guess they could all come over here and get driver's licenses--oh wait that won't work because even though they walk around with pockets full of explosives they think alcohol is dangerous so they don't drink it.

    Ballard's quote is the kind of propaganda the American government loves to trumpet. They want nothing more than to strip away our last vestige of privacy.

    I say fuck 'em. I'd rather take my chances with the terrorists than have some incompetent, unaccountable, authoritarian civil "servant" reading my e-mail and tracking my GPS. These days our government gives me the creeps.
     
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  5. ak.R Registered Member

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    Dear friend

    the problems that a citizen faces are mostly similar in quality yet different in grade and severity in various nations.. consider this important quote:
    "this conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new to the American experience.. in the councils of governments we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex the potential for disastrous rise of power exists and will persists". Farewell address 1961 D. Eisenhower​

    Did we complete the necessary societal transformation that will catalyze the transition from a cold war period to another safer and better age??. did we abandon economical, logical, psychological, ethical ties that push us back to those global confrontations?. it seems that this transition was for many too painful to bear in economic terms.. but the failure was not only in that regard, it is and was also in setting up the right principles and priorities (ETHICS) for a new world that could be more stable and prosperous.

    your reference to the interlocking event seems to me very diagnostic of a cycle of action and reaction that indicates a hole in the middle of the storm.. that is a severe and chronic lack of commonsense ethics..
     
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