From: John B (discwuzit@yahoo.com)
Date: Sat Mar 30 2002 - 10:29:44 MST
Sayeth Mike Lorrey:
> > Exactly when has it been claimed that wartime ever
> > decreased the rate of technological development?
Samantha Adkins:
> If the tech is developed during wartime,
particularly
> nanotech and AI, then they are likely to be owned by
> the military and to be very highly classified. This
> will not only likely slow down many extropian dreams
> - it is likely to lead to some of our worst
dystopian
> visions. So perhaps I should have said "slow down
> technological advances useable for extropian
> purposes".
Not necessarily. Computers were developed very much in
a wartime economy and were rapidly deployed into
commerce. Most war-time medical breakthroughs
(defibrilation for one) were also rapidly released.
IMO, it really depends on WHICH part of the
Government, and which government for that matter, gets
its hands on the technology. There are parts of the
American government which are inherently secretive -
that's their whole reason to exist - whereas others
are quite willing to share and spread the technology.
And sometimes these live cheek-by-jowl, one classic
example being various American intelligence agencies
and DARPA.
True, the tech would be less likely to be released
today when there are such potentially disruptive
'dual-use' capabilities being freely passed around in
message lists such as this one and many many others,
as well as in print. However, there will be massive -
truely massive - development required for any American
government organization to be able to create a
nanotech device to say nothing about deploying it. It
seems much more likely to me that the government would
outsource or contract the development to one of many
different technological firms, and said firm would
find a way to deploy the technology in the
non-military arena.
This is the golden goose of technology, or the Grail,
or the golden fleece - take your mythological pick.
Whoever gets their hands on it WILL find some way to
exploit it, be it in public service, some stealthy
organization, and/or a private company. Personally,
I'm expecting all three.
Ms Adkins went on to say:
> It was not just dot com that got wiped as you know
> from experience. The dot com inflation didn't happen
> in a vacuum. In my humble opinion it was engineered.
> The sheep were fattened and slaughtered. The unruly
> tecnophiles were put in their place. The more
> bothersome (threatening of existing power bases)
> technologies were slowed down in their development
> and deployment drastically, especially with the
> addition of braindead IP laws. If all of this did
not
> have engineered elements, it should have. I'm sure
it
> was thought of as I would think of it if on "the
> other side".
> Trying to explain away the economic meltdown as just
> because of stupid business plans is extremely
> unconvincing. Stupid business plans don't get
> empowered to radically crash the economy all by
> themselves. The dot-com thing is a symptom of the
> fattening and the slaughter - not its cause.
To quote Freud out of context - "Sometimes a cigar is
just a cigar." Sure, conspiracy theorists and
investigators and all sorts of people will be digging
into this mess for a long time. Heck, people're still
looking into what happened in 1929, and there's still
massive amounts of questions unanswered. Was it really
the sinking of the Titanic which caused the insurance
and therefore the banking industry's concerns which
lead to the stock market crash? Or was that the
excuse?
I don't know the answer. I do know that bad things DO
happen to good people - and good technologies. I do
not believe that there is any sort of 'star chamber'
or international conspiracy of the degree required to
generate this kind of international slap-down. I do
know that people are greedy and often do NOT do their
research, or trust people who claim to have done the
research.
*wry grin* To be fair, there are people out there such
as myself who shoot their mouths off without knowing
everything about the situation. All I can honestly say
is that if there *IS* convincing evidence of such a
group controlling our lives, I have yet to see it in
the (relatively few) years I've been watching.
In short, I don't see the dot-coms as anything other
than people betting - BETTING - on a 'sure thing' and
getting their hands slapped financially.
-John Benner
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