Technoccult

While it’s easy to sit in a room somewhere and discuss the merits of building autonomous vehicles to do the “dirty work,” I’m very disturbed by the trend. In fact, it quite sickens me.

I feel that we are at a time when we should be seriously seeking to understand the humanity of each other. Other peoples, other cultures, other ways of being. Looking at the news, it may seem that often, the only thing that we have in common with a person on the other side of the planet is that we are both human.

But, I feel it’s important to remember that this commonality is the only thing that is important. The most important thing we have is our humanity, and humanity means that with makes us human.

Sitting in an office, safely controlling a machine that will extinguish the lives of human beings is not going to connect us to another human. It is not going to give us the chance to learn about that person’s worldview, nor is it going to give us the chance to describe ours. There is no conversation. There is only death.

And this is death at no cost to ourselves.

How disconnected do we want to be? Will we accept war without a price?

Positively Glorious: Our soldiers should die in war

See also: Military Robots and the Laws of War (adapted from PW Singer’s Wired for War)

My position is simpler: we shouldn’t fight wars.