Friday, January 24, 2014

This Means War

This Means War

            Over the course of this class so far this semester, we have compared the aspects of humans, nature, and culture, exploring the similarities and differences between the three. As a class, we have created Venn Diagrams and list charts depicting the overlapping relationships including music, dancing, and other aspects of human life, even using Cheetos and French cuisine to describe the relationship.  Very few things were able to be placed singularly in the “human” category.  One of these was technology, which has completely shaped and altered the way humans live, and which each technological advancement, humans move farther and farther away from nature.
            Possibly the most important and uniquely human invention is, as the title of this blog suggests, is war.  Other than human beings, no other species has the desire to kill or harm an entire race or group of people out of pure hatred, jealousy, lust, or misunderstanding. Think about it—when’s the last time you saw all of the bears in a forest gather against all of the buffalo in the same region?? When did a large pack of geese attack a large pack of ducks over turf? Or religious misunderstanding?
            Never.
            Now, with the rapidly expanding field of technology, our potential for worldwide devastation is greater than ever before.

Let’s go back 100 years ago, just before the start of World War I.  Add the new technology of machine guns and you get the technology used in the War.  Fast forward 30 years and add the technology for atomic bombs and you get World War II. Now think of today, not only are developing countries fighting for nuclear technology and nuclear weapons.  Not only does the US have the potential to essentially wipe entire countries off of the map with nukes, we also have the potential to send countries back to the stone age using cyber-warfare and cyber-attacks, like Stuxnet, which set back Iran’s nuclear program close to a year with only a single attack. 

1 comment:

  1. Mick- You land on a sad truth, of course, the singularly human capacity for violence. You touch on the changes from past to present, but it's a large topic of course. This topic doesn't give you much place for personal response, and you include no outside connections. Finally, would we be in the stone age after cyber attacks? Electrical grid controls could be taken out, but all mechanical elements like cars and heat and water would remain, no?

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