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Missile Defense

Technology has always found its greatest consumer in a nation's war and defense efforts. Since the last attempts at a "Star Wars" defense system, has technology changed considerably enough to make the latest Missile Defense initiatives more successful? Can such an application of science be successful? Is a militarized space inevitable, necessary or impossible?

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rshow55 - 05:10pm Sep 2, 2003 EST (# 13470 of 13470)
Can we do a better job of finding truth? YES. Click "rshow55" for some things Lchic and I have done and worked for on this thread.

The growth of Human Powers Over the Past 100,000 Years http://www.mrshowalter.net/Kline_ExtFactors.htm

Each curve plots the ratio of the best technical performance at a given point in time divided by the unaided human power to accomplish the same function.

From CONCEPTUAL FOUNDATIONS FOR MULTIDISCIPINARY THINKING by Stephen Jay Kline Stanford University Press 1995, p. 173.

Please look at the curves. Our sociotechnical evolution is proceeding far faster than our biological evolution.

Looking at those curves says some basic things about what hope and hopeless look like to a sociotechnical animal.

Being part of a successful socio-technical system is hopeful. Advancing the capacities of sociotechnical systems is hopeful.

Being excluded from sociotechnical systems (or messing up sociotechnical systems) - there is a long way to fall down to a "state of nature."

Because sociotechnical factors are so very large - we are not, as a species, committed to zero sum games.

Too often, we act as if we are.

But we are very committed to orderly, complex technical and social systems - and we have to be careful, and conservative - for hope to be real.

We have a lot to lose. We live - as social beings, and as groups, in fragile circumstances.

Fredmoore's comment above is very important.

I think the very unstable conditions and powerful effects shown by Kline's growth curves reinforces reasons to answer Fredmoore's question carefully.

I'm trying to respond.

- -

We are team animals - and that's a big thing that Americans know pretty well - though we screw up a lot. By and large, we're good at forming and maintaining teams. And our education - so easy to criticise in other ways - build team forming and maintaining abilities.

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