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Your point is a good one but I think it's somewhat cheating to pick 1909-1947 as your arbitrary 38 year period since both world wars happened during that period
by wayne 17y ago
Your point is a good one but I think it's somewhat cheating to pick 1909-1947 as your arbitrary 38 year period since both world wars happened during that period. A world war has a way of spurring innovation in killing technologies more than anything else. I guess it's possible we have two more world wars between now and 2047, but that seems unlikely to me.
- InclinedPlane 17y agoWell, I picked two periods, 1909-1947 and 1947-1985, in one two world wars occurred, in the other the Cold War occurred. But that's the point isn't it? Over time history happens. The time line is not a steady state. People thought that the end of the Cold War was the end of history, but that wasn't the case at all, plenty of history happened and is still happening, throughout the world. Plenty more history will happen in the next 38 years. Perhaps that history will include a war between nuclear powers (somewhat unlikely) or perhaps it will include things we cannot anticipate today, but it's a bit silly to imagine that we can predict what the technology of 2047 will look like. That's BDUF at its worst. Better to look at the technology needs of today while planning for flexibility and be able to iterate rapidly if we see a need for change down the road. If the US had locked itself into some grand technology road map in 1909 it would have most assuredly lost WWII because it could not have anticipated the technological needs of that war.