[Politics] Technological Advancements in the Increasingly Moralistic Abyss

Discussing the morality of warfare is modern notion relegated to the last 100 years inasmuch as it has become a global policy to become familiar with the rules of warfare. And yet for every reason that we have found ourselves in the moral dilemnas of war because of technology, our rules and thoughts do not reflect the very dilemna of the technology itself.

With the introduction of the aerial bomb in World War I and more prominently in World War II, the question of how you kill your enemy in warfare became the difference between pride, honor and morality. Just yesterday, we entered ourselves into the next round of technological advances that have never, yet should always, give us pause about how we engage our enemies. AOL ran an Associated Press article detailing the latest air squandron headed for Iraq: a jet fighter, powered by a turboprop engine, able to fly at 300 mph and reach 50,000 feet; outfitted with infrared, laser and radar targeting, and with a ton and a half of guided bombs and missiles; controlled by a pilot at a video console in Nevada, 7,000 miles away. It is a robot.

I doubt, personally, that this latest advance will receive the kind of moralistic attention it deserves. Firstly, because this technology is not a giant leap from the spy drones and ballistic missiles we have used for some time. But we will also not rethink the moral dilemnas of war technology because we all still take pride in our military advances no matter what our views about certain wars are.

The reason we must ask ourselves whether this is a moralistic way to engage the enemy is not so much because of the technology itself, but because of where it is ultimately leading us: robotic forces on the ground engaging a human enemy on the other side. Is this an advancement we are willing to make?

In my opinion, such a step is the penultimate tragedy of our obsession with technology. It is, to me, the most morally degrading act conceivable to the art, honor and necessity of warfare. The fact is, we must see where our technology is taking us in the future, not just what it offers us in the present. We must question the value of technology as it leads us more and more towards complacency about the nature of our own existence.

That is part of what makes the day and age we live in so crucial. We are at the cusp of a time when technology can serve us to make a better world, or where we can serve our own obsession and plunge into a world where technology devoids any human engagement with the tragedy of our own making. If we do not see every advance made (not simply in the military realm, but everywhere) as an opportunity to question the value of life and the action the technology replaces, then we are bound to take the plunge into what has been, until now, dystopian science fiction.

[As an added afterthought (and self-promotion), check this interview I did with JBOT, from the band Captured! By Robots, for The Wave Magazine in 2004. JBOT, who built an ensemble of robots to play with, doesn't just question the morals we violate unto ourselves, but unto the technology we create as well]