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Deus Ex Writer Discusses 'Dangerous Technology'
Dan Weaver writes "One of the writers for the exceptionally good action RPG Deus Ex has authored a rather thought-provoking Salon article on the Bill-Joy theme of dangers posed by emergent technologies and the difficulties that police states (both pleasant and not-so-pleasant) encounter in dealing with them. In the light of revelations about China's tardiness and confusion in addressing the SARS epidemic, this article is particularly timely."
I've never heard of the term, "Negative Utopia". I believe you have in mind the word "dystopia" which is in common use.
epidemics affect defined populations or geographical areas, pandemics affect large areas. This is becoming more of a global issue, so I think pandemic is a more fitting term, though I don't know if it has reached that magnitude. yet.
I live in Toronto which represents the biggest SARS outbreak in the west. Our news talks about practically nothing else (I have no idea if this is the same in other cities), but one thing they're fairly sure of is that it is NOT air borne.
There was an interview on the radio with Patient 3 on Friday. Her mother and father were the people who brought SARS to Toronto from Hong Kong. He parents flew back on the plane infected with SARS. All of the people on the flight have been now been cleared. There is SOME evidence that it can be transmitted aerially through droplets but it does not appear to be air borne.
Additionally, of the 80 or so likely cases and 100 more possible cases only 10 people have died and in 8 cases they were elderly and most of those cases there were other contributing factors. More people in Canada have died in the same period from complications from regular pnuemonia. Not to say that there is nothing to worry about, but the biggest danger of SARS is that it is infecting health care workers which is crippling the health care system. If SARS was a tenth as bad as the media is making it out to be, there would be thousands of cases, not less than 200.
Mind you, I was in China Town this weekend and when someone sneezed on the street people acted like a bomb went off.
The trench warfare of WWI came about in large part because of the tremendous defensive power of the machinegun. Maneuver warfare, which might have shortened the war considerably, was impossible because no matter how much you "softened up" the enemy with artillery, machineguns would still be there to mow you down. The conditions in the trenches contributed to the death of at least twice as many soldiers as did enemy bullets.
If you don't consider the Gatling Gun to be a "true machinegun", then the surrender of 12,000 Union troops at Harper's Ferry during the American Civil War seems to invalidate the claim that generals couldn't accept surrender.
If you do consider the Gatling Gun to be a machinegun, then you could just go back a bit further, to 1805, when Napoleon's Grande Armee captured 30,000 Prussian and Russian soldiers at Austerlitz. No machine guns, Gatling Guns, or anything even close at the scene of that surrender, yet somehow it happened.
I could go on and on with examples, but the point is that soldiers did surrender before the advent of the machine gun. The machine gun IS a killing device. It kills more efficiently than any other form of bullet-launcher.
I don't consider machine guns to be evil, because I was often damned happy to have two M60s at my disposal as a platoon leader. But let's not pretend that machineguns have saved more lives than "penicillian".
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
Umm...Iceland had a functioning democracy with a constitution about 800 years before the founding of the US...
"To any truly impartial person, it would be obvious that I am right."
As nightfall does not come at once, neither does oppression.
In both instances, there's a twilight where everything remains
seemingly unchanged, and it is in such twilight that we
must be aware of change in the air, however slight,
lest we become unwitting victims of the darkness.
- - Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas - -
According to Wikipedia it was actually coined by John Stuart Mill's associate Jeremy Bentham. Anybody with access to the OED care to provide further details (it would be particularly interesting to see whether cacotopia inspired the coinage of dystopia or vice-versa)?
In the great CONS chain of life, you can either be the CAR or be in the CDR.
I am not a historian, but deus ex machina was also featured prominently in the performance of any tragedy during medieval times.
After a terrible tragedy of a play, god would come down from heaven and make everything alright, dead characters ressurrected, etc. because, essentially, "by the power of god, no such misfortune/tragedy would ever come to pass within our benevolent lord's princely realm" (lord meaning the head-honcho with all the swords and the knights and whatnot)
Two points. Notice he said CONSTITUTIONAL democracy. Iceland certainly had a democracy, but was lost to Denmark by 1500 IIRC.
Prior to the United States, a constitutional democracy did not exist since Athens.
In all honesty, the US is not a democracy, but a Republic loosely based on Roman governance and Athenian constitutional law. Pure democracy is nothing more than rule by majority which is always chaotic. In the United States of America, like in Athens, certain rights are guaranteed and cannot be deprived by the democracy.
Iceland was a democracy because of necessity, simply because the population was so small and no one group or person could assert control over the entire island. The entire population of Iceland is honestly LESS than the zip code in which I live TODAY.
I don't read or respond to AC posts