Weapons that autonomously acquire, classify, track, and destroy
targets
Reduction of operations and support resources requirement by 50%
without impairing combat capability
Expected are a force powered by electricity (ecological
concerns), robotic tanks and aerial vehicles, and-this is not
science fiction-bionically enhanced soldiers with embedded
chips, able to sleep when commanded, and an exoskeleton system
allowing individuals to carry 400 pounds around the battlefield
(compared to the mere 100 they carry now). General Jerry C.
Harrison even formulated the following order: "Okay guys, let's
shoot number 49. Tune in your goggles to see but not be seen."
The look that kills (the proud accomplishment of
university-based research) becomes reality.
The only comment that can follow such a description is that all
the characteristics of the civilization of illiteracy are
embodied in the expectations of military efficiency. Globality,
interconnectedness, open-ended goals and motivations, reduced
human involvement, and many partial literacies are all here,
presented in specific expectations. The questionable aspect is
the implicit theme of the permanence of the institution of the
military, probably the most resilient legacy of the civilization
of literacy. What the technology of the civilization of
illiteracy requires is the command of the abstractions (the
language) driving it, the partial literacy associated with this
language, pertinent to military or any other use. As one of the
partial literacies of this time, military literacy defines the
domain of action and the interpretation of such actions. It is
relevant, for instance, that disarmament treaties not be
formulated without military language, i.e., without the military
experts, the ones we want to release from their functions. Each
such treaty either discards a part of the language of weapons
and associated technologies, or makes it less relevant, as it
opens new avenues for increased military efficiency.
The new organization of the military is one of confronting
technologies and associated military literacy. Accordingly, to
talk about orders given by an officer, whether a weapon
understands such orders, and all similar logocentric examples,
means to still look at the military from the perspective of a
civilization from which it continuously distances itself.
Artificial eyes (radar, vision systems), odor detectors,
touch-sensitive devices, speed sensors, and many other digital
devices free the human being from confrontation and
progressively eliminate death from the equation of war. Those
who compare the photographic images of previous wars to animation
on computer game terminals compare a condition of direct
confrontation, of our own nature, and of the realization of the
limited condition of life to that of mediated experiences. The
night sky lit up by tracers, the eerie video-game-like actions,
the targets seen through remote cameras are of a realm different
from that of destruction and blood, where moral concern is
triggered. The expectation is pragmatic, the test is efficiency.
The survival of the military institution in its literate
structure and the lack of understanding of just what makes
literacy unnecessary in the pragmatic framework of today's
global world are not the same thing. The first aspect refers to
the immense inertia of a huge mechanism; the second involves the
difficult task of freeing ourselves, as products of literate
education, from ourselves. Recognition of such a fundamental
change does not come easy. Universities, bastions of literacy,
producing the illiterate technology of war, are caught in the
dilemma of negating their own identity, or becoming agents of
illiterate action. We hang on to the ideal of literacy, as well
as to the so-called necessity of strong defense-which reflects
literacy-based values such as national borders in a global
world-because we are not yet ready to cope with a new dynamics
of change that is not militarily determined, but which results
from structural necessities of a socio-economic nature. The
political map of the world changed drastically in recent years
because factors affecting the pragmatic framework of human
practical experience, at the scale we reached today, are at work.
Globality is not a dream, a political goal, a Utopian project,
but a necessity resulting from this new scale.