Searcher08 wrote:8bitagent wrote:
I'm sad someone my age would chose such a position of evil, knowingly. I declined a 75k salary year with an almost guaranteed s-clearance for Northrop Grumman's global hawk pilot program in 2005. My friends thought I was crazy and said they welcomed invasive background checks and interviews. I said I rather live on the few hundred dollars I have a month than serve these freaking ghoulish hounds of death. And I still maintain that. Everything is about video game virtual reality "wars", where feckless liberal wonks sit in air conditioned rooms murdering Pakistani villagers from half a world away.
That is the most inspiring thing I have read here in a long time, 8bit. I think what will change things are actions like that.
And it is also scary, because it shows the degree to which your friends have been co-opted into a "War on Terror as job opportunity" culture. It seems to have shifted from "I dont like it but it puts bread on the table" to "Hey, miss it, miss out!"
You make a clear distinction between game world and real world, but more and more the focus is on mixing them - the degree of horrendous behaviour one can get away with under the flag of "Its only a game!!" is limitless. There seem to be a lot of people who are pushing the idea that after the semantic web, the next big thing is going to be "business as gaming". I think GlobalHawk "shoot the Paki villagers from the comfort of an Aeron chair" is the direction things are going. Fast.
I think there has been a memetic breeding programme happening... and the environment is now favouring the psychopath more and more. Many years ago I used to work at "HAL". It was perhaps one of the first truly globalist organisations - people who worked there said they would have been much more stressed transferring to another computer company in the same district than switching continent and staying with HAL. However at that time, although paternalistic, they treated their people well. Fast forward and a new CEO came in who referred to people as 'units'. I really thought he was going to refer to them as "useless eaters", as that is how he thought about them. Fast forwarding to the dot com era, the degree of fixated sociopathic behaviour I see seems to have increased enormously. By the time of the 'Social Network', we seem to have a general business culture where freedom from basic human empathy, monomania verging on autism, and social darwinism are consciously employed as standard operating procedures.
I'm the kind of person that will download a zillion movies, but see a $10 bill on a store floor and ask if anyone dropped it. I already hate the fact everything we wear, eat, use, consume, etc is made in sweat shops and virtual slavery gulags in Asia and Latin America. How the job opportunity came about was my friend had just moved into a new house, and he befriended the next door neighbor who was a pretty nice middle aged black dude who was a retired airforce commander now at Northrop. I was putting all my best design work on cdrs, and my friend gave his neighbor one and I ended up getting a call. And then I'd have these long meets with him trying to entice me with the global hawk program and running me through things to expect, real time relaying and stuff required s but not ts clearance. But ultimately I just never felt comfortable with the military. Now I've known and have met many many former and active duty. I'm 33, but these guys I meet are 18-28 usually. A lot on leave from Iraq and Afghanistan or on their way there or back. A lot seem to be open to "conspiracy" questioning or at least agreeing things aren't right...but "it's a job". It's not even about patriotism
It's about this shitty economy, where we're pretty much at $5 a gallon gas. I think of all the poor/working class black, white and hispanic families proud to send their kids off. total taken advantage of. I saw Restrepo, and you have these guys...that if they aren't physically obliterated, they come back emotionally and spiritually destroyed. Suicides, domestic violence, self destruction with alcohol abuse and drugs, severe depression. I mean its not like WW2...while I believe WW2 was manipulated and engineered, and the US did mass amounts of war crimes; least that was a war about something. Whats Iraq and Afghanistan about? I know the soldiers arent bad guys, but the break me up break me down conditioning is something p
Ok to your big point: Years ago I read about IAO, Digital Angel, Advanced DARPA systems, etc. All that real time global battlefield communications, robots, droids, new generation drones.
Now theyre developing "big dogs", humanoid terminators, cheetah robots, and all sorts of sci fi stuff. So the full on intergration blending virtual and real time battle conditions has long been in the works. Popsci and Mechanics celebrates that stuff. And the liberal college kids can dig it, with their ipods and smart phones...because its hip and cool. It's "facebook". Geez, referring to people as "units"...straight out of a Dilbert strip!
True big brother, not conspiracy boy-who-cried-wolf "the police state is here" claims, may someday actually hit here. If the "USA! USA! We got that bin Laden" sentiment we have seen on virtually every single conservative, centrist and liberal blog/tv/radio/paper/social network/blog/forum.etc is any indication...the fallout from a large scale terror attack or something else would guarantee "they" could get away with anything.
And while I love videos games and have always grown up with them; no doubt in my mind this is how the recruits of the future wars are being groomed. War with Pakistan, China, Iran, etc will be the usual meat grinder mixed with robotic drone facilitation...why, it's all a video game. Look at the 2007 Iraq war gunship footage, they're just laughing it up.
"Do you know who I am? I am the arm, and I sound like this..."-man from another place, twin peaks fire walk with me
