Peter Lee on the future of DARPA, and the Transformational Convergence Technology Office on February 2, 2010
Focus
Strategic Surprise
Establish Megatrends Office
Re-engage Academic Research
DARPA: The Post Soviet Years 1989 – Present
Flash Forward
Real Terminator Robots By 2015-2025: Part 1/5
Real Terminator Robots By 2015-2025: Part 2/5
Real Terminator Robots By 2015-2025: Part 3/5
Real Terminator Robots By 2015-2025: Part 4/5
Real Terminator Robots By 2015-2025: Part 5/5
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I found the website quite useful in terms of the information provided and I am grateful since it correlates with one of my current writing projects. On the other hand, creating terminator robots with self-reflective thought and physicial capabilities that far exceed human beings is insane. The potential for a 1984 nightmare with these entities as the proverbial muscle clearly lays the foundations for the creation of a military state. DARPA’s philosophy is simply stated: if it can be done, then it should be done. The Department of the Navy justifies DARPA’s “Terminator” research on ethical and moral grounds. They point out that the Terminators will eliminate or significantly reduce the need to put human beings in harms way. What is more likely is that the “Terminators” could be used against the citizens should they protest against the increasing use of invasive technology as spyware.
On another level society has evolved like other organisms on this planet. What we know about the evolutionary process is that social systems (as well as human beings and other species) follows a pattern of differentiation of structure and function. As human society has evolved technological innovation has in some ways made our lives better and more rewarding. The other side of the coin is that the human species has increasingly become irrelevant because of automation. As technology evolves human beings (as far as the work force is concerned) become more and more expendable. In the automobile industry, for example, they are becoming irrelevant since robotic entities can easily replace them. The robotic machinery used in the automated factories is more accurate than human beings, they don’t get tired, they don’t ask for paychecks or raises in salary, they don’t ask for benefits such as health care, or retirement benefits. It is only a matter of time where robots of one sort or another will eliminate the vocational component of human beings. Completely automated supermarkets are already on the drawing board and one major university is running computer based history courses that uses a game framework. These computer driven courses operate in a manner that is not dissimilar to such games as The Sims. The student who takes the course gets to immerse him or herself in a historical era and meet some of the major historical characters of the period. This educaitonal innovation and other and others has the potential to change the face of higher education. Why hire professors or subsidize a campus and the support staff to maintain it if you can do it all online.
The bottom line is that humans, as a species, have evolved to the point where their technological evolution has come to the point where homo sapians have become increasingly irrelevant. I suspect that the time will come where increased human irrelevance will become the end game for humanity’s evolutionary journey.