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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 - 07:10am Sep 16, 2003 EST (# 13690 of 13692)
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.

I've been spending a lot of time looking at the fine work of John Schwartz.

1598 http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@13.F3xNbutgFrA.5760@.f28e622/2005 starts with a quote from

Sorting the Reality from the Virtual by John Schwartz http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/21/weekinreview/21SCHW.html

which includes this (with emphasis added):

“Eric M. Freedman, a professor of law at Hofstra University School of Law . . (said) . . . "When technology is new, it's perceived as especially frightening" and even subversive, since it tends to baffle adults and appeal to the young. In 1915, Mr. Freedman added, the Supreme Court held movies to be outside of the First Amendment, and didn't reverse itself until 1952.

He also cited the historian Peter Bacon Hales, who said 19th-century audiences viewing magic lantern shows "were often so shocked by the portrayal of this new and terrifying world that they fainted, cried, or talked back to the magic lantern screen."

By the 20th century, audiences for Thomas Edison's first movies fled theaters when they beheld the sight of a locomotive heading toward them. People adjust.

Or they used to, Mr. Saffo said. These days, he said: "Before you get used to the old thing, it's evolved to a new thing. We're setting ourselves up for a situation where the line between fantasy and reality can be blurred beyond distinction."

A generation ago, there was an advertising campaign for a brand of recording tape that asked "Is It Live, or Is It Memorex?" Today, the answer is becoming, "Who Knows?"

Jaron Lanier, a pioneer in early versions of virtual reality simulators, now says he is troubled by the prospect of digital fakery. Especially since Sept. 11, he said, he has yearned for ways to gain a measure of certainty and trust, and says he would like to see a system of authentication for digital objects.

“ If there's no way to establish what is true," he said, "we're sunk."

We don't have to be "sunk" -- we are moving into times with new opportunities, that can make us both safer and more comfortable. But we're at an intermediate stage -- where new problems are arising along with our new powers -- and these problems aren't yet solved.

Where Here See's There By GEORGE PACKER http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/21/magazine/21WWLN.html . . .

" The world media machine has given us a global village - just not the expected one"

"By now everyone knows that satellite TV has helped deepen divisions in the Middle East. But it's worth remembering that it wasn't supposed to be this way.

"The globalization of the media was supposed to knit the world together. The more information we receive about one another, the thinking went, the more international understanding will prevail. . . . .

"But this technological togetherness has not created the human bonds that were promised. . . .

"In some ways, global satellite TV and Internet access have actually made the world a less understanding, less tolerant place. What the media provide is superficial familiarity -- images without context, indignation without remedy.

The technical togetherness provides necessary conditions for understanding, tolerance, and effective cooperation. Not sufficient conditions. We've got more to learn. Some key points concern context (there has to be enough for what people need to do) and cooperation and communication along a trust-distrust continuum.

I've been concerned about building stable peace, and cooperation, between groups that naturally and properly distrust each other, that are afraid of each other, and are very different. Distrust needs to be acknowledged in a humanly workable context, and accommodated. People naturally distrust each other in many ways -- and they can get along pretty well with each other anyway, if certain things are understood.

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Just now, it seems that a great deal is

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New York Times on the Web Forums Science Missile Defense