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Monday, September 11, 2006

china be damned

It chaps my hide when do-gooders harangue on about violent video games and the evil ramifications there of. Don't these folks realize that our next crop of super-soldiers will stem from this xBoxed PlaySlaytion generation?

In a decade or three, count on it ~ we're going to be invading resource rich hearts of darkness with brigades of wee and massive robotitrons ... hurling their unfeeling bodies at stone throwers and the fanatic defenders of a home(land).

But these mechanical beasts of war burden will not be unthinking, unguided swarms crashing against soft, yielding walls of humanity ... No ~ instead, they will whirl and swirl in cunning swaths of destruction, wild and freakily focused by the fevered pitch of adolescent competition.

They will be ... video game war machines.


Our future super-soldiers will have the lightning reactions bled from hours of glued eye practice. Each soldier will be a wired, fanatical, frothing addict to combat and the game. Each battlebot will be a score keeping, a blood letting, a digital point of honor measured between battalians of quick-fingered video-philes a thousand leagues distant and a million miles separate from the carnage of their unyielding, intoxicating lust for the next kill-shot. This new soldier-controller will see life and it's snubbing as a tally, a total, a level gained in stature and dominance amongst his pack of snarling, wild-eyed peers.


so ... i suppose it won't be all that different.

17 comments:

Velo Bella said...

or maybe they will just be cute, but clunky dancers.....

X Bunny said...

orson scott card saw it coming

if you haven't, you need to read 'ender's game'

(but don't read the sequels)

PAB(a.k.a.CID) said...

on a pure technogeekery level, i thought battlebots were kinda cool. But eventually they did start to get me thinkin, and worryin about the future....

what this world needs is a new fad.

how about sex?

Little_Jewford said...

You've watched "Toys" one to many times....dont you realize its cheaper for the government to throw poor americans into battle then million dollar battle bots?

shawndoggy said...

LJ nails it 'gain, at least as far as the Army and Marines go. Nonetheless, the Air Force's "unmanned drone" programs do seem to be going Olaf's way... prolly 'cuz it's cheaper to lose a $500K model airplane than a $15M one. I remember reading 'bout the drone pilots stationed down at Nellis AFB in Las Vegas who were "flying" missions in Iraq.

And, uh, Pab... sex is plenty popular. How's about birth control?

norcalcyclingnews.com said...

i didn't say it would be OUR military that first uses battlebots.

but eventually, we will be forced to do so ... because it will be another game of escalation.

cost effective is not the same as militarily effective.

Ron Castia said...

I agree, and for this very reason I don't allow my son to play war simulation games. Call it my own form of conspiracy lunacy if you will, but I think these games desensitize kids to the horrors of war. Train them early...right?

Lothar Glerbny said...

I wonder if it was easier for someone sitting in a cushy chair, sipping a cup of coffee, chomping on a doughnut watching the war on Infrared TV from the good 'ol USA to decide to shoot a bad-guy by pulling the simulated trigger on his simulation console to employ his drone's weapons (assuming the General approves it, which is really the kicker...someone else decides whether he employs his weapons not him, is that relief of responsibility?).

But, he then has to go home to his family and somehow not be a warrior, a killer, for 12 hours.

When you are there, all day every day, watching and talking to the same guys, when you see them out the window, not on a TV, when the bad guys are shooting at you while you sleep, not some stupid warbot, when you hear the Medics calling ... screaming ... for evac of injured personnel, when you see engineers and peace keepers blown up by IEDs placed by indiscriminate killers, it can be both harder and easier to pull the trigger, but what it can't be is impersonal. You decide to take a life or not. You decide if the whole situation warrants the release of weapons.

That is the reason I don't think warbots and drones should be used. I don't want to see any more Americans lose their lives in this battle but I think the human factor cannot be discounted and we are needed.

Sorry if I got too emotional. This subject brings up some shitty memories.

Anonymous said...

you can blame the early American company Atari. This is where it all started. Orgins of early video game development were largely in the US.

Other countries have taken video games to the next level with so many of the other electronics gizmos on the market today.

How can you blame China?

EB said...

I think video games should come with a treadmill or bike to run them (time moving = time playing, not so many fat kids), and some sort of electric shock when you shoot someone or are shot.

Responsiblity and consequences. Plus, when people don't want to play the violent ones anymore I can become a Tetris star.

Ron Castia said...

Lothar speakith with real World experience.

Beyond my comprehension, I can speculate, but that's about it.

norcalcyclingnews.com said...

LG ~ it is the "human factor" that you speak of that i fear we are losing ... at computing speeds ... in our US culture. Look at our ability to insolate ourselves in our cars, our homes ... hell, just look at the bubble one can create around one's self with a cell phone ... ignoring the world, ignoring the importance or worth of another.

here's a miniscule analogy (but topical for us pedalers, nonetheless) - how many riders have we lost this year from being hit by drivers? How many stories do we all have of someone in a car not feeling it necessary to be delayed 5, 10, 20 seconds from their travels to safely make a pass? Or, worse - intentionally smacking one of us in retaliation for our existence on their road.

It is all dehumanization ... or, perhaps we should call it the indulgification of self? bubblehead-itis? I dunno.

Regardless - i can't but nod my head and sigh with sadness when you talk about the violence we do upon ourselves and others over there in the middle east. You talk about not wanting to see more Americans losing their lives over there ... and I agree wholeheartedly. and i want to extend that to any more lives lost over there. Especially since, in my opinion, this is a war chosen by an unscrupulous administration.

You know I believe the war to be an invasion of a sovereign state that posed no direct threat to the United States. You know I believe that we have committed the highest crime under international laws, laws that WE were signatories and primary authors of. Laws that attempt to protect the weak from the ill designs of the strong.

And I wish we could hold accountable those responsible for the blood spilt, souls ravaged, spirits broken from this chosen war. But I don't think it will happen. Because the strong can re-write the rules.

So, I too, don't want to see American lives lost in Iraq or on some future battlefield. But, there will come a time when semi-automaton killers will hold the triggers in our world. Because in the end, they will be the most efficient killers.

automatons.


Anony ~ you misread the title ... i don't blame the Chinese for the robot/drone armies to come. I blame them for eventually being able to wield a staggeringly large human military ... forcing the hand of certain countries to arm themselves with unflinching and efficient killing machines. (japanese manchuria anyone?)


g-nome ~ Lothar is a good man.

jAndy donka-donk said...

In the macdookie documentary "stupersize me" I remember them showing that school with a pretty organized PE program, and they had a video game exercise bke where they had to pedal and then steer the motorycle on the race course........

Now that was one of the best ideas I have ever seen. Even if they still had a soda machine in the quad.......

Lothar Glerbny said...

Random reflections:

I've been to a gym where you can get individual access to the internet or TV on a display connected to a bike, but only as long as you are pedaling the stationary bike fast enough to power it. I like the idea!

Remember our conversation (or maybe it was my rant) on one of your earlier posts about the bubble people and the entitlement generation? It is only getting worse. With these wireless earpieces we are turning ourselves into the Borg. Soon we will all be assimilated.

On a sad but related note, another rider, John Pekham from AV (the guy I got in the break with at Dinuba), was killed in a head-on with a car this past Friday. The driver is believed to have been intoxicated.

And, I second your no more lives, I didn't mean to leave out all the innocents whose lives have been so tragically disrupted by our self-centered egotistical government.

captain sassy pants said...

The govenator will be the first to impose these terminators.

PAB(a.k.a.CID) said...

i think this post needs a serious moo about now....

-

moo.

nicknameless said...

yipes...can you post some flowers or something?

Will they change back into little animals and stuff like the transformers did when I was a kid?