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Are you proposing that unmanned aircraft can only be used for evil purposes? I see huge potential for use in agriculture. I talk to wine growers in California
by asynchronous13 13y ago
Are you proposing that unmanned aircraft can only be used for evil purposes?
I see huge potential for use in agriculture. I talk to wine growers in California and we figure out how much money they can save using one of our products instead of using a tractor. I see that as a good thing, but perhaps I am simply living the banality of evil.
- ferdo 13y agoI agree with you, there's great potential good for this tech. The evil that is coming from it and will continue to come from it is perpetrated by those that, as said earlier, accept the premise of the State/government that they work for. If it's a person's job to use technology such that it results in innocents being killed, injured or sucked up into a byzantine legal system and that person keeps doing that job, that's an example of the banality of evil. Making quads to replace manual labor isn't banal or evil.
- scott_s 13y agoWhich is why the discussion should be about the policies and rules we need to allow good uses, but prevent bad ones.
- ferdo 13y agoWe already have policies and rules that are considered "good" by the people that implement and execute policy. That's the problem.
- vowelless 13y ago> If it's a person's job to use technology such that it results in innocents being killed, injured or sucked up into a byzantine legal system and that person keeps doing that job, that's an example of the banality of evil. I guess McDonald's fits that bill as well, as diabetes and obesity are among the biggest killers in the US.
- ferdo 13y agoGluttony has always been a human failing. The National Security State is a relatively new one.
- adestefan 13y agoCan you please pinpoint the year that you think the "National Security State" is new? Because it's been going on since time immemorial.
- ferdo 13y agoThe National Security Act of 1947 is the beginning of the modern American national security state. Compare to human gluttony, it's a relative newcomer.
- mpyne 13y agoYou would be thrilled about what the ancient Romans did then. But if you want to stick with the U.S., you might find that stuff that President Lincoln did quite atrocious from a civil liberties point of view as well.
- ferdo 13y agoI'm well aware of the history of espionage, thanks. Lincoln and the Romans had no wires to tap, hence the "modern" national security state.
- PavlovsCat 13y agoSome marketing fits the bill; without that, McDonalds is just an option to hurt yourself, while being spied on or killed by drones it NOT a choice, which does make a difference.
- __--__ 13y ago> perhaps I am simply living the banality of evil. Possibly. Since we've already gone godwin, IBM sold computers to Germany. Those machines were used for something we do these days as a matter of routine - a census. It's hard to get more banal than a census. Yet that census was invaluable in identifying and segregating large chunks of people based on ethnicity. It was so instrumental to the Third Reich that James Watson of IBM was given a medal of honor. The tech is just a tool. It's who you give it to and what they do with it that matters. The question is, what do you do about it? You can't really restrict the dispersion of technology. Every attempt to do that so far has failed, for everything from munitions to cryptography. You can make certain uses illegal. That doesn't seem to be stopping the government or police these days. All that seems to do is put a lot of private citizens in jail. The only solid solution I can come up with is to come up with countermeasures of some sort. How to solve a problem like human nature. It's quite a humdinger.
- jlgreco 13y ago> "James Watson of IBM was given a medal of honor." Specifically the "Order of the German Eagle", if anyone else was confused about this.
- afterburner 13y agoThomas Watson, not James Watson.