Aviation Week describes the coming of pervasively distributed sensors, all linked together by a wireless network, to be everywhere yet nowhere: listening, watching, waiting, understanding. Best of all they’ll look like a fly, a spider or a blade of grass.
Gaggles of mechanical grasshoppers, flies, bees and spiders–each a relatively dumb creature–can be networked into very smart networks to conduct intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance.
In the last decade, remote sensors arrays have been changing from somewhat obvious, hard-to-mask, mechanical objects to autonomous, self-propelled, insect-like devices that can climb walls or jump up stairs and then lie dormant until motion, noise or vibrations trigger their activation.
The grandchildren and great-grandchildren of “WolfPack”–a coffee-can size, air-dropped network of ground sensors–include fast-moving spiders, high-jumping grasshoppers, bees with detachable surveillance payloads and sensor-equipped dragonflies.
Development of BAE Systems’ WolfPack worked out the dynamics of connecting a series of low-cost, not-so-smart sensors to create a very smart network. That network could, for example, monitor and analyze nearby communications and map the information flow. It then could trigger electronic jamming or even the injection of a data stream of algorithms that captures low-power traffic, attacks communications protocol stacks and otherwise manipulates a foe’s flow of information. A second-generation WolfPack added a propulsion system to manipulate the modules and recharge the batteries.
“Advanced communications can move intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) around the battlefield in real time,” says Lt. Gen. Dave Deptula, the U.S. Air Force’s Deputy Chief of Staff for ISR. “These ISR sensors now are transformed into the nodes of a truly global, net-centric weapons system.”
All this is amazing. But consider what it implies: bandwidth dominance, the control of space, algorithms and operating systems and most of all the power to crawl into any abode and overhear practically any thought on the planet. If these sensor systems every come to pass, and there’s a strong probability they eventually will, what kind of world will it be and with what forces in contention?
“You want to monitor activity someplace, because you think bomb fabrication is going on,” Penkacik explains. “What would the swarm look like that you deploy to provide surveillance for a week? It would involve a flying robot with an imager that would perch on a building across the street. It would probably be in a sleep mode until an acoustic or seismic sensor on a crawling robot [inside the target building] detects a vehicle arriving. Through the ad hoc network, the sensors will wake up and begin the surveillance mission. You can track the activity and introduce additional robots into the swarm.”
Decentralized data fusion is being examined as a way to build even more intelligence into the swarm. If each robot provided a separate data stream, it would overwhelm the operators’ BlackBerry-size control devices. The effort to convert the mass of surveillance data into a refined stream of useful knowledge through distributed processing is being worked through BAE Systems Australia at the University of Sydney.
“Everybody does a little piece of processing and you may have larger algorithms executed by multiple micro-scale processors,” Penkacik says. “It’s analogous to using home computers to help solve enormously complex mathematical problems rather than buying a Cray [high-speed computer].”
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63 Comments
1. chuck:Sounds like Neil Stephenson’s The Diamond Age
Jan 12, 2009 - 11:00 pm 2. Ant Lover:If you can figure out how to get this this video to freeze at 1:30, then this belongs up at the top.
Jan 12, 2009 - 11:17 pm 3. truepeers:what kind of world?
well, if we all, from terrorist to ordinary citizen, become potentially transparent to government(s), the only way to maintain a free society, and global economy, i.e. the only kind of social order that is likely to succeed in feeding the planet, will be to make government increasingly transparent (and/or accountable when executive operations, like conduct of war, require secrecy). One way or another privacy is going to be eroded and will have to be traded for more freedom in negotiating the shared reality of our nations and inter-national arena. Our stakes in each other will become more visible along with our responsibility to act as guarantors for each other’s freedom.
Jan 12, 2009 - 11:22 pm 4. Alexis:So, will we have dragonfly wings that double as solar panels?
Jan 13, 2009 - 12:13 am 5. weSwinger:@chuck: Michael Chrichton (may he rest in peace) also covered this in his 2002 book, PREY. The nano-bots grew a whole malevolent mind of their own, and their creators and inferiors humans became the prey. But I like Stephenson even better. More dash.
More realistically, every incremental development in technology has had the dual nature of giving those who want to control their fellow creatures another handle to do it with, while simultaneously offering the rest of us greater freedom and control over our lives.
The next issue is how to keep this in the hands of the good guys? Are we going to be subject to the next generation of perfidious Rosenbergs, ready to hand over our hard won technological advantage to the Chinese or to Putin or Bin Laden in the name of some deluded ideology?
Jan 13, 2009 - 12:19 am 6. wildernesscalling:Sounds like “RAID” has a new customer base to sell too… In reality this has many simple work arounds for the tech savvy foe/criminal. Machines are cold and heartless, idea for evil uses…
Jan 13, 2009 - 1:30 am 7. starling:Gives new meaning to the old saw about being a “fly on the wall.” To extend the metaphor a little more, if I were worried about these electronic bugs being where I didn’t want them, I’d be giving some thought to countermeasures. Specifically, I’d be wondering what is the analog, in this context, of a bug zapper, of fly paper, of a honey pot, or for that matter, a fresh, steaming pile of manure.
Jan 13, 2009 - 2:53 am 8. sfblue:I think the problem will be in the target identification and/or data alnalysis. All the information in the world is no good if you don’t have analysts organizing and giving relevant reports. There is so much potential information at hand that the chief problem will be filtering out all of the extraneous info.
Jan 13, 2009 - 3:24 am 9. sfblue:So these bugs would be mobile as opposed to the stationary bugs that are presently ubiquitous. I guess this would allow a surveillance team to ad hoc bug a place on the fly (no pun intended).
Jan 13, 2009 - 3:28 am 10. wretchard:I think the problem will be in the target identification and/or data alnalysis. All the information in the world is no good if you don’t have analysts organizing and giving relevant reports. There is so much potential information at hand that the chief problem will be filtering out all of the extraneous info.
It’s a problem even now. Computers were supposed to allow the end user “unmediated access” to information. But as the volumes of data increased, getting information out of it became a non-trivial task. Some websites are merely aggregators, like Drudge, because we can’t be bothered to sift through the raw data. Just imagine the volumes of financial data, CCTV data, sensor data, etc out there that we just can’t visualize.
Some months ago, I wrote about how the US ability to send precision munitions onto any arbitrary spot on earth was referred to by insurgents as the “hand of Allah”. Now with these robotic bugs, the US has the “eyes and ears of Allah”. Unfortunately, we have yet to invent the “brain of Allah” to match. Ultimately we have a human government employee trying to make sense of his godlike input so that he can hurl down the godlike output.
And then there’s time lag between gathering and acting. The truth is out there, but we often learn it too late. Some of my roommates in school were medical students and they had a joke. ‘A surgeon is a doctor who does everything but knows nothing; an internist is a doctor who knows everything but does nothing; a pathologist is a doctor who knows everything and does everything, but too late.”
Jan 13, 2009 - 4:57 am 11. DWB:1984 come to mind? We will apply the “beehive” mind to the problem of data manipulation. Should our government finally decide that it knows what’s best for the people an become totalitarian, we’ll be there.
Jan 13, 2009 - 5:07 am 12. Annoy Mouse:THEM!,
Jan 13, 2009 - 6:45 am 13. Michael Hoskins:Too much, weren’t those giant ants? The Micro-Electro-Mechanical-Systems (MEMS) are the things that make mechanical engineers drool. As the Nano revolution begins to bloom swarms and distributed processing are going to take over everything from medicine to aerial surveillance. Imagine in a modern world war how long it would take to deny satellite surveillance when there are swarms of ball bearings in their orbit. With tens of thousands micro-air-vehicles flying over a contested area the need for satellites is greatly diminished. A million fish swimming the ocean can detect submarines. When this begins to happen the whole idea of manned systems becomes absurd. But are swarming tactics likely to initiate an asymmetric strategy? How else do you take out swarms than by destroying the factories? The factories themselves must be built in swarms!
#10. Next the swarms need to be self feeding and self replicating. When that occurs, are we talking about the REAL reason for ants, mice, locust, gnats and the most enduring insect of all, roaches?
The hand, and eyes and ears of God indeed.
Jan 13, 2009 - 6:56 am 14. programmer:Counter measures:
1) Pull the plug (all these devices require power, of sorts).
Jan 13, 2009 - 6:58 am 15. Pseudo-Polymath » Blog Archive » Tuesday Highlights:2) Jam the signal.
3) Insert virus.
4) Develop anti-bug bugs.
5) DDOS (Distributed Denial of Service) attack against aggregators.
6) Develop DDT (Device Deterrent Technology) (okay, okay, I’m stretching here).
[...] Next generation intelligence gathering. [...]
Jan 13, 2009 - 7:06 am 16. Stones Cry Out - If they keep silent… » Things Heard: e50v:[...] Next generation intelligence gathering. [...]
Jan 13, 2009 - 7:07 am 17. RWE:Aviation Week published a story a few years ago about a small UAV spotted by an engineer visiting a major aerospace company. It apparently was being flight tested in the company parking lot and was smaller than your hand.
Add to this the news that the consumer electronics industry is planning to move to wireless plug and play. You won’t hook up your new DVD recorder or DVR or MP3 player to your TV or audio amp; you’ll just plug it into the power and it will seek out and interface with the other elements of your home entertainment system. That’s on top of the cellphone traffic, cordless phone RF signals, radars, WiFi, and commercial broadcast stations out there. Recently it was discovered that if you have a TV channel broadcasting on CH 3 or 4 locally with the new digital signal that you can fergitaboutit when it comes to trying to hook up a VCR to your home set.
So these surveillance bugs will swim through a very complex RF environment. That will be both a challenge and an opportunity. Trying to pick out the signals emitted by the bugs in the middle of that electronic swamp will be difficult for the user and even more challenging for those trying to spot the surveillance.
At the Pentagon various procedures were in effect to prevent people from picking up non-RF computer emissions for spying purposes. We had a fine screen wire over all of our computer monitors. Then they ran a test, attempting some surveillance. As it turned out, the RF from nearby National Airport was so intense that they had no hope of detecting anything in the Pentagon.
Jan 13, 2009 - 7:15 am 18. Anton:A leaf blower or a spray of a mildly acidic solution would be a low-tech answer.
It becomes a question of just how “nano” these things can be made; imagine if they could be the size of fleas, you could attach them to the enemy’s clothing and he could take them to the meeting!
Jan 13, 2009 - 7:20 am 19. Beatrix:(1) sensor swarms are a near-term reality, but some challenges are easy, some are hard;
(2) the sensor technology is not hard;
(3) dealing with the data storm is hard;
(3) the robotics technology required to build an autonomous fleet of self-supporting “bugs” as a platform is very hard; not impossible, but it’s not just around the corner.
(4) therefore, i believe what one will see first is immobile sensor fields…sensors mixed in with asphalt, drywall, paint, ceiling tiles. next comes “spray-on” sensor nets for border security, etc. it will be awhile before we see fleets of bugs.
(5) of course, before we see mobile robotic sensor nets, we will have mobile personal sensor nets: when everyone carries a (next-gen sensor-enriched) cell phone, the network will wake up, as it already has to some extent.
Jan 13, 2009 - 7:28 am 20. Tinfoil Hatter:“14. programmer:
Counter measures:
1) Pull the plug (all these devices require power, of sorts).
2) Jam the signal.
3) Insert virus.
4) Develop anti-bug bugs.
5) DDOS (Distributed Denial of Service) attack against aggregators.
6) Develop DDT (Device Deterrent Technology) (okay, okay, I’m stretching here).”
Loss of signal, loss of bug or active jamming are all evidence of a target wishing to be hidden. The target’s countermeasures thus render it visible.
Jan 13, 2009 - 7:47 am 21. Peter Boston:The Japanese have developed a robot suit so that elderly Japanese farmers can bend over for long periods and lift heavy loads they would otherwise not be capable of. The technology is amazing and also frightening when you consider that its purpose is to replace the Japanese teenager that no longer exists to do the same work.
A swarm of mechanical killer cockroaches crawling through Hamas tunnels in Gaza would instantly improve the human genome but would only be an historical oddity if there were not the will to employ them and to enforce civilization upon the survivors.
What value is war fighting technology when there are no people who have anything worth fighting for?
For a post modernist the only Enemy is the neighbor who challenges your intellectual superiority. Islamist barbarians are only misunderstood.
Jan 13, 2009 - 8:08 am 22. Mr. Robinson:Boys and girls, can you say, “The Fall”?
Jan 13, 2009 - 8:12 am 23. JSP:Actually, this is straight from Vernor Vinge’s A Deepness in the Sky. He answers the question about what kind of place it would be. It’s not very nice if you are not the hero, and even then it’s a hard place.
Jan 13, 2009 - 8:44 am 24. slade:China Mieville described that and the next level in Perdido Street Station (classified as steam punk a term I always liked.)
Jan 13, 2009 - 8:53 am 25. programmer:Tinfoil Hatter says:
Loss of signal, loss of bug or active jamming are all evidence of a target wishing to be hidden. The target’s countermeasures thus render it visible.
programmer mangles another metaphor;
In a swarm of fish, which one pulled the plug?
Jan 13, 2009 - 9:17 am 26. Brock:Search: Google is working on that. So is the NSA, I’m sure. Not sure which has the bigger budget.
Counter-Measures: widely deployed UAV-eating mecha-sparrows. If every house in Gaza has a dozen sparrows (or falcons) on its roof, Israel is back to square one. Also, HEPA filters.
Jan 13, 2009 - 9:24 am 27. Peyronie's:This is kinda technophobic no?
Jan 13, 2009 - 9:40 am 28. Thad Beier:My favorite SF instantiation of this is in Vernor Vinge’s A Deepness in the Sky, which was mostly about the rise and fall of civilizations. The fall was usually precipitated by an era of what was called “ubiquitous law enforcement”. His localizer technology in the same book is another example of distributed sensors — this was based on the work of a company called Aetherwire. Aetherwire’s localizers were meant to be dime-sided voluntary active location sensors that would self-network, so that you could know where anything is at any time.
At some point, the exponential increase in computing power per watt has to end, but it likely will be a decade or two away. In that time, it seems inevitable that almost everything will have some kind of computational and communication capability. Look at how Israel (the most publicized example) tracks everybody semi-voluntarily by cellphone. My guess is that we will volunteer to bug ourselves in similar ways, trading convenience for privacy. Kids, in particular, seem open to this — note the ubiquity of privacy-challenged systems like Facebook and MySpace.
Jan 13, 2009 - 9:49 am 29. Limpet6:Every sensor has its Achilles heel. Some take to narrow a view, some to broad a view. Some respond to metal, some to heat, some to seismic agitation. Get a hit from all three and MAYBE you have an intruder and maybe you have a stray dog.
It still takes someone to figure out what is important. In those instances where you know what you are looking for they are helpful, otherwise they just clog the data flow.
Stansfield Turner thought espionage could be handled exclusively through technology and we’ve seen where that has gotten us.
Folks, “24″ is fiction. It is not economically do-able to have a bug and a camera in every room and someone monitoring both all the time.
Jan 13, 2009 - 9:57 am 30. chachapoya:Disruption of the data stream would be fatal to such a system. One bit out of place and it might as well be Early American poetry.
Jan 13, 2009 - 10:19 am 31. Cascajun:Presentations on sensors, sensor networks, sensor packages on UAV and robotic platforms, sensor fusion, bioinspired computation, and data processing make up a significant portion of the SPIE Defense, Security, and Sensing 2009 program.
Jan 13, 2009 - 10:27 am 32. bob:Folks, Here’s The Real Deal For The Real Thing
Get ‘em while reclining in the Lazy Boy. Works wonders.
Jan 13, 2009 - 10:39 am 33. whiskey:Wretchard you forget the violence veto.
Already, now, Muslims in the US and Europe are known to have extremist views and plot terror attacks. They do so openly, and suffer no consequences.
Why?
1. Their violence veto, i.e. being willing and able to exercise extreme violence while the feminized West is not, gives them an advantage. A nation of Pelosis, Reids, and Obamas are certainly not capable of doing anything but submitting and surrendering to Hamas and Hezbollah and AQ.
2. Their PC shield. The feminized West WANTS to destroy the nucleus of the West, which is the nuclear family and monogamy. The famous Feministing post that Ace and others referenced show that in spades. The Elites in the West dream of destroying the nuclear family, middle class aspect of the West and so protect the Islamists.
The technology will be used like the food police and trash inspectors in Britain: to target middle class people who are not violent and avoid messy confrontations with hard men who can and do kill, who are beloved by the Elites. It’s one more tool to destroy the West by the alliance of the West’s Elites and Muslims.
Jan 13, 2009 - 10:46 am 34. Alan Kellogg:Scenario
The bug floated through the window on a light air, its wings moving just enough to keep it stable and oriented. The target was on the other side of the room, speaking to the assembled journalists behind a battery of microphones.
The bug lined up on the target through its sights, while the jets extruded from the rear. With an ultrasonic click the flames were ignited and the bug began to accelerate.
To be stopped by another bug that grabbed it from behind. It took the defender only a second to fry the attacker’s workings and drop it on the floor. There it would be swept up, picked out of the trash, and examined by security for clues regarding provenance.
Back at a cheap apartment the neo-anarchist shut down his computer and engaged self-destruct. He was almost to the corner and about to turn left when the car rolled up. He never learned how they tracked him down so quickly.
(In another version of this the attack bug is brought down by a micro-mini machine gun armed defender bug. That’s for folks who like dog fighting.
)
Jan 13, 2009 - 11:14 am 35. RWE:A few years back the USAF issued a Request For Proposal for the development of robotic mechanisms that could be dropped into a target area, penetrate an installation, and dismantle it from within.
In other words, things like the Replicators from the Stargate series. Except that they would not replicate themselves. At least not at first.
You have to wonder how such things would be used against jihadists and how the jihadists would respond.
Jan 13, 2009 - 11:39 am 36. NahnCee:“It’s one more tool to destroy the West by the alliance of the West’s Elites and Muslims.”
I see it as being just the opposite. We in the west will be educated and sophisticated enough to be able to protect ourselves (plus which we presumably will not be plotting to blow shit up, so why bother listening?). The ones who will not be able to mount an effective counter-defense will be the bin Laden’s of the world, already hunched in their caves.
The thought does occur, too, to wonder if this isn’t the nifty-neat technology we were discussing at BC a month or so ago that was being reported back from Iraq. There were educated guesses at that point about eyes in the sky and what those eyes could see, but what if the eyes were teensy tiny and on the ground and moving about in countries where bug infestation is nothing to get excited about?
Jan 13, 2009 - 12:12 pm 37. Stephen:All this time I was worried that Big Brother Is Watching You. Now I guess it is going to be Big Bug Is Watching You.
Jan 13, 2009 - 12:26 pm 38. Roderick Reilly:Vernor Vinge wrote about this in “Forever Wars” back in the 70’s or 80’s.
Jan 13, 2009 - 12:46 pm 39. Weary G:All very interesting, but I think the most important point, raised here before in regards to other technology, is the “Will” gap.
Developing all sorts of neat little toys for infiltration, spying, and even combat is self defeating if you are not willing to use it with decisive effect. Basically, you are creating them for others who lack the means to make or at least create themselves, but have no such qualms in doing so.
Perhaps the Machines in the Terminator storyline decided humans were a threat when they realized that those that had created them would not in the end use them to defeat their enemies, but instead would be overwhelmed by indecision and fecklessness. The machines saw the worst of humanity rising to rule it, and decided self destruction was in evitable for human kind.
They just decided logically to rush things up a bit…
Jan 13, 2009 - 12:54 pm 40. ginsocal:If they name this thing “Skynet,” I’m outta here…
Jan 13, 2009 - 12:58 pm 41. Roderick Reilly:I’m concerned about this migrating to the civilian world. The UK will simply leapfrog its military, and put such systems to work surveyling its civilians.
It will take a bit longer to take hold in the U.S., where some of us still insist on keeping our cojones (or are at least keeping them visible in a jar on the mantlepiece). Still, I can see municipalities bugging the pigeons so those creatures can keep tabs on us.
Hmmmm . . . didn’t I used to know a bag lady who insisted the pigeons in the park were agents of the government?
Jan 13, 2009 - 1:00 pm 42. elijah:Robert O’Harrow’s No Place to Hide as a backgrounder on current monitoring technologies.
1st post
ISR, UAVs (MAVs?), and hand of allah update
Jan 13, 2009 - 2:01 pm 43. kaba:The entity, public or private, that chooses to monitor the minutiae of my life will certainly be bored to tears.
Jan 13, 2009 - 3:31 pm 44. Jenn M.:Now I know a lot of Engineers read this site! All the low-tech solutions to solving a high-tech problem were hilarious! It’s like defeating the Invisible man with a bucket of yellow paint…
Jan 13, 2009 - 4:13 pm 45. Eggplant:If this sensory web were coupled to artifical intelligence then there would be the possibility of a real technological nightmare. It’s my understanding that the NSA tries to monitor everything on the web but can’t because the information is flowing in faster than humans can monitor. That was the fallacy with “1984″, i.e. Big Brother’s monitoring plates required a human operator for every plate feeding into the Ministry of Love. That would have required some poor zhlub at the Ministry of Love spending all day looking at images of empty toliet cubicles (he’d go nuts from boredom before ever catching anyone committing thought-crime).
Jan 13, 2009 - 4:16 pm 46. bob:You never know what you’re gonna find in those toilet cubicles. You might find my former Senator Larry ‘Widestance’ Craig.
Jan 13, 2009 - 4:41 pm 47. Annoy Mouse:Eggplant,
Jan 13, 2009 - 5:10 pm 48. Anodyne:For fun watch the movie “The Lives of Others”. It doesn’t solve the sipping off of the firehose problem but surely takes on some of the ethics.
I think Weary G hits the nail on the head when he refers to the “will gap.” Anything that facilitates better intelligence/situational awareness is to be welcomed, but I can’t help but think that a good many of the sensor/surveillance technologies currently under development are simply high-tech means of avoiding the hammering of bad guys who are desperately in need of it.
Jan 13, 2009 - 5:16 pm 49. Anodyne:For those interested, distributed networked sensors in anti-submarine warfare.
Jan 13, 2009 - 5:47 pm 50. markb:I would imagine that asphalt,cement, and plater and even spray on foam bugs would use RFID like tech. The entire countryside could be strobed with a power source to activate the bugs.
The bugs could be defended by the same method. Unknown power source pop up? Kill it.
Jan 13, 2009 - 6:41 pm 51. Derek:This is almost amusing.
We’ve had radicals on the streets of most large cities enunciating clearly their desires and intentions.
We invent small machines to find out what people’s intentions are. And invent complicated and error prone technologies to handle the flood of data.
Blindness isn’t only a physical disability.
Derek
Jan 13, 2009 - 7:26 pm 52. james wilson:After all the terrorist and all the criminals are contained we will finally have the technology in place to enforce acquiescence to the new State, its expectations, obligations, obedience, and funding.
Jan 13, 2009 - 8:55 pm 53. sfblue:There will be no more revolutions. Joke’s on us.
My father, who is a surgeon, said the same joke and added “A psychiatrist is a doctor that knows nothing and does nothing.”
Jan 14, 2009 - 12:49 am 54. Warsong:A few years ago the man who invented Oracle (name?), and, half a dozen machine languages, wrote an article in “Wired Magazine” about Artificial Intelligence. He included an essay by a friend of his who was in prison.
The conclusion by both is that we are creating (through Artificial Intelligence) the “more advanced species that will replace us” (“…no intelligent species in history has survived contact with a more advanced species”).
The “guest author” wrote one of the most brilliant, logical essays I’ve ever read…we know him, as, “The Unibomber.”
Jan 14, 2009 - 1:41 am 55. Bob Murphy:51. james wilson
I used to think like that, too, but not so much any more. All this stuff is so subtle, the possibilities so endless and the technology moving so quick that second rate minds, defensive ones who just aren’t open to the almost limitless possibilities will always be so far behind that the rest of us will have developed antidotes/countermeasures before or very shortly after the drongoes become a problem with yesterday’s technology.
Jan 14, 2009 - 3:48 am 56. twobyfour:54. Warsong
…we know him, as, “The Unibomber.”
Neva herd of him.
Oh! You did not mean Unabomber, Theodore Kaczynski, perchance?
Borderline schizophrenics are often brilliant, in some particular focus, but in other aspects they may as dumb as rock.
Jan 14, 2009 - 5:02 am 57. twobyfour:Cont’d…
The conclusion by both is that we are creating (through Artificial Intelligence) the “more advanced species that will replace us” (”…no intelligent species in history has survived contact with a more advanced species”).
Actually, I’d object to the premise that the AIs would be more advanced. There is a little chance that the AIs can autonomously evolve their intelligence beyond endowment we initially provide. They would be constricted by logic and patterns they were programmed with. Them may be gazillions and they would still not be able to overcome their bounding box.
The more likely case would be a “grey goo” in which we drown. Not always a superior kind is an impetus for a demise of another kind. An example may be Islamic Grey Goo, that could potentially destroy a superior culture by their sheer numbers. Mankind could be knocked out by lowly virus, tomorrow. Or wiped out by a dumb rock!
As for survival vis-a-vis contact with a more advanced species, that may have actually happened in remote past and we are still here, mayhaps even because of it.
Take us, for example. We are super predators. We effectively rule over the dominion of animals. But as we become more aware of relationships and complexities around us, at least as a species, we become more intelligent and tend to mitigate our detrimental effect on the less advanced species. We would still be predators, People Eating Tasty Animals, as far as can be projected into the future, but will learn to manage our prey better.
Jan 14, 2009 - 5:47 am 58. Steynian 308 « Free Canuckistan!:[...] SKYNET– TINY VERSION: “Aviation Week describes the coming of pervasively distributed sensors, all linked together [...]
Jan 14, 2009 - 6:18 am 59. WestWright:#58. Steynian 308: thanks for the reminder about M. Steyn. After reading this techno/sciFi post I needed a bit o’ Steyn.
Jan 14, 2009 - 8:09 am 60. Charles:Some months ago, I wrote about how the US ability to send precision munitions onto any arbitrary spot on earth was referred to by insurgents as the “hand of Allah”. Now with these robotic bugs, the US has the “eyes and ears of Allah”. Unfortunately, we have yet to invent the “brain of Allah” to match.
………….
Its helpful to remember here that Allah is a meteorite.
Ultimately we have a human government employee trying to make sense of his godlike input so that he can hurl down the godlike output.
Jan 14, 2009 - 9:32 am 61. Charles:….
In Christ we have have access to the mind of God.
UN-acceptable censorship: The United Nations tries to outlaw criticism of Islam
By Floyd Abrams
Wednesday, January 14th 2009, 4:00 AM
Almost 500 years ago, on the wall of the Castle Church in Wittenberg, Germany, Martin Luther posted his 95 Theses, characterizing as “madness” the notion that papal pardons could absolve individuals for their sins. As viewed from Rome, Luther had maligned, even defamed, the church. Luther was eventually excommunicated. His conduct ultimately led to the creation of a Protestant Church in Germany and a Reformation throughout Europe.
It is difficult to believe that in the 21st century anyone would seriously propose that conduct such as Luther’s should be deemed illegal. But a few weeks ago, the General Assembly of the United Nations took a giant step in that direction. It adopted – for the fourth straight year – a resolution prepared by the 57-nation Organization of the Islamic Conference calling upon all UN nations to adopt legislation banning the “defamation” of religion. Spurred by the Danish cartoons of 2005, some of which portrayed the Prophet Muhammed in a manner deemed offensive by the OIC, the resolution was opposed by the United States, most European nations, Japan, India and a number of other nations.
Nonetheless, it has now been adopted.
http://www.nydailynews.com/opinions/2009/01/14/2009-01-14_unacceptable_censorship_the_united_natio.html
Jan 14, 2009 - 9:49 am 62. Anodyne:@ 51:
This is almost amusing.
We’ve had radicals on the streets of most large cities enunciating clearly their desires and intentions.
We invent small machines to find out what people’s intentions are. And invent complicated and error prone technologies to handle the flood of data.
Blindness isn’t only a physical disability.
A willful blindness at that: Strategic Collapse at the Army War College
Jan 14, 2009 - 9:59 am 63. Al_Batross:An RPV/UAV/RPG (Remotely Piloted Grunt) operates under direct human control, especially (I hope) when it’s weapon systems are active, so that the human operator can provide an organic safety-catch.
Jan 14, 2009 - 2:51 pmHowever, fully autonomous systems would bother me, even if very small and carrying only tiny sensor packages. I would not be worrying about the little chaps going postal off their own bats, but rather about the danger of them being infected by malicious programming and turned into lethal weapons even without being armed (eg high speed flight at head-height in a crowded street).
I would also worry about the autonomous technology transferring into consumer electronics and thus becoming readily available to Uni-bomber hobbyists and Jihadi wannabees, who could incorporate it into their own devices.
Please keep a human in the loop for as long as possible, even if that human is only sitting at a PC thousands of miles away from a bug-sized bug.