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."

Comments

Lifesavers, those machine guns!

[Infonaut]

20,000 British soldiers died at the hands of German Maxim machineguns on the first day of the Battle of the Somme in WWI.

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".

Re:Trends, Big Brother, etc.

[James_Duncan8181]

Umm...Iceland had a functioning democracy with a constitution about 800 years before the founding of the US...