State of affairs, 2010.

I consider myself a student of history, and a engineer of the future. One of the most insightful descriptions of computers came to me by way of an 80+ year old WW2 veteran whom I happened to meet one morning and asked him for directions. He said that computers “were there to replicate human action”. Think about it abstractly if you can, and you will see that his statement is practically as true as a mathematic axiom. Writing? Computers have

helped spread knowledge to the ends of globe: Wikipedia for example. There are even societies in the 21st century that still lack written langauge, yet computers are assisting even these people to develop their own means

of archiving the events of the day. Imagine that, completely missing the age of writing, and diving headfirst into the age of the internet….

Now think of the inverse of his statement, if computers are here to replicate human action, what do they fail to do?

They suck at making friends. Facebook has definitely revolutionalized some aspect of human existence, but you still need to meet facebook friends face to face numerous times for them to actually be a friend of any meaning, and most facebook friendships don’t result in much facetime. Then there are “dating” websites, which are no where near as popular as facebook, and have results that are 99% dissapointing. As far as meeting people, I vastly prefer meeting and dating people through real-life friends.

Computers are terrible at making energy. In fact, most versions of the internet consume massive amounts of energy. Global warming? Try turning off the internet, you’ll save more greenhouse gas than all the corn fed,

anti-biotic injected cows farting for a year don’t quote me on that one), but you get my point. If in some dream-scenario, the “magic” of legislation deemed that the internet could be powered solely by sustainable energy, then it would different, and better.

Next….warfare. Well, we now have drone planes. These have given a military “advantage” because certain jobs no longer need to be risked to human life. However, this is a hands off kind of war. And I believe that nothing replaces being a human on the battlefield instead of being a remote control operator of a war machine.

How else are these electronic soldiers going to hear the screams of civilians they might be bombing? The laws of war are as old as civilization: settle your differences, don’t kill the women, children and civilians, fight with honor, and when the dust clears, the survivors realize how stupid they just were and make a truce.

Lots of fiction, and tv shows point to the idea that machines will one day rise up against a less intelligent human race. However, I think these e-doomsday scenarios are more upon us than you might think. United States President Eisenhower said after World War 2, to beware the military industrial complex. Unfortunately, the gears of war have ground on year after year, and have embraced fully the technological edge the today’s brighest minds can provide.

Well, the wars of the 2nd millenia have so far been about oil. Let’s hope that 2020 will see an unprecedented amount of sustainable power. Imagine that, free energy….If the internet could help free up the energy of the planet, then it will have succeeded providing us the one thing that seems to start all kinds of war….power, pun intended. The internet also succeeds in allowing those of us who pursue life, liberty, and happyness to have a glimmer of hope that other people that care about life, liberty and happyness actually exist out there regardless of which border they are behind.

One thing computers have accomplished that was impossible before is that information is crossing borders,both ways, faster than ever before, it has redefined what a border on the map even means. When seriously heinous things happen, the whole world tends to know about it practically instantly.

With computers, there is the serious potential to abstract all humanity away from some human task, most importantly in the ways of warfare, But there is also tremendous potential to share knowledge. Specifically, the kind of knowledge that will ensure that the world becomes more peaceful than ever before. I believe Eisenhower would still make his exact same speech today. And I believe that the wars of today are fought with very little honor and are increasingly becoming less honorable. I would like to see a world of peace. And I believe one way to get there is to work on reducing the reasons for going to war.