Weapons that autonomously acquire, classify, track, and destroy targets
Reduction of operations and support resources requirement by 50% without impairing combat capability
Expected are a force powered by electricity (ecological concerns), robotic tanks and aerial vehicles, and-this is not science fiction-bionically enhanced soldiers with embedded chips, able to sleep when commanded, and an exoskeleton system allowing individuals to carry 400 pounds around the battlefield (compared to the mere 100 they carry now). General Jerry C. Harrison even formulated the following order: "Okay guys, let's shoot number 49. Tune in your goggles to see but not be seen." The look that kills (the proud accomplishment of university-based research) becomes reality.
The only comment that can follow such a description is that all the characteristics of the civilization of illiteracy are embodied in the expectations of military efficiency. Globality, interconnectedness, open-ended goals and motivations, reduced human involvement, and many partial literacies are all here, presented in specific expectations. The questionable aspect is the implicit theme of the permanence of the institution of the military, probably the most resilient legacy of the civilization of literacy. What the technology of the civilization of illiteracy requires is the command of the abstractions (the language) driving it, the partial literacy associated with this language, pertinent to military or any other use. As one of the partial literacies of this time, military literacy defines the domain of action and the interpretation of such actions. It is relevant, for instance, that disarmament treaties not be formulated without military language, i.e., without the military experts, the ones we want to release from their functions. Each such treaty either discards a part of the language of weapons and associated technologies, or makes it less relevant, as it opens new avenues for increased military efficiency.
The new organization of the military is one of confronting technologies and associated military literacy. Accordingly, to talk about orders given by an officer, whether a weapon understands such orders, and all similar logocentric examples, means to still look at the military from the perspective of a civilization from which it continuously distances itself. Artificial eyes (radar, vision systems), odor detectors, touch-sensitive devices, speed sensors, and many other digital devices free the human being from confrontation and progressively eliminate death from the equation of war. Those who compare the photographic images of previous wars to animation on computer game terminals compare a condition of direct confrontation, of our own nature, and of the realization of the limited condition of life to that of mediated experiences. The night sky lit up by tracers, the eerie video-game-like actions, the targets seen through remote cameras are of a realm different from that of destruction and blood, where moral concern is triggered. The expectation is pragmatic, the test is efficiency.
The survival of the military institution in its literate structure and the lack of understanding of just what makes literacy unnecessary in the pragmatic framework of today's global world are not the same thing. The first aspect refers to the immense inertia of a huge mechanism; the second involves the difficult task of freeing ourselves, as products of literate education, from ourselves. Recognition of such a fundamental change does not come easy. Universities, bastions of literacy, producing the illiterate technology of war, are caught in the dilemma of negating their own identity, or becoming agents of illiterate action. We hang on to the ideal of literacy, as well as to the so-called necessity of strong defense-which reflects literacy-based values such as national borders in a global world-because we are not yet ready to cope with a new dynamics of change that is not militarily determined, but which results from structural necessities of a socio-economic nature. The political map of the world changed drastically in recent years because factors affecting the pragmatic framework of human practical experience, at the scale we reached today, are at work. Globality is not a dream, a political goal, a Utopian project, but a necessity resulting from this new scale.
Book Five
The Interactive Future: Individual, Community, and Society in the
Age of the Web
Collapse and catastrophe as opposed to hope and unprecedented possibilities- these are the party lines in the heated discussions centered on the dynamics of ongoing changes in which the whole world is involved. Paul Virilio is quite expressive in his formulation of the problem: "An accompanying evil…is the end of writing, as it unfolds through image technology, cinema/film, and television screen. […] We don't read anymore, we hardly write each other, since we can call each other on the phone. Next, we will no longer speak! I'd really like to say: this will indeed be the silence of the lambs!" No less powerful in their assertions are those who see chances for social renewal in interactions not embodied in the rules of literacy. The electronic forum of the European Commission, involved in Project Information Society, lists Ten Bones of Contention from which I chose the following: "The system we are stuck with and frantically trying to fix comes from another time and an entirely different set of circumstances. It is changing massively in front of our noses and needs to be completely rethought and radically overhauled." The statement is less expressive than Virilio's, but no less intolerant.
As discussions continue to bring up extremely important aspects of the conflict marking this time of discontinuity, the billions of people populating our world today constitute themselves through a broad variety of practical experiences. A list of these experiences-from primitive patterns of hunting and gathering food to eye movement command of remote systems and applications driven by voice recognition in the world of nanotechnological synthesis-would only augment the confusion. Given this broad pragmatic spectrum, no one could seriously project the future as one of virtual communities, or of an electronic democracy, without sounding overly naive or directly stupid. We know how far we have come, but we do not really know where we are.