In the future – soon, very soon – the United States military will know the entire planet just like the back of its hand. It will know other countries better than those countries know themselves.
Predictor: Sterling, Bruce
Prediction, in context:In a 1993 article for Wired magazine, Bruce Sterling looks at the future of digital warfare, including paying a visit to the U.S. Army’s National Training Center to see the work of the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA), the Defense Mapping Agency and the Army’s Topographic Engineering Center. Sterling writes: ”There was a demo … called ‘Project 2851.’ This is a new standard for digital terrains, a standard for all American armed forces. It will let them share terrain databases on any number of different machines. But there is another aspect to Project 2851. Project 2851 is about the virtual reproduction and archiving of the entire planet. Simulator technology has reached a point today in which satellite photographs can be transformed automatically into 3-D virtual landscapes. These landscapes can be stored in databases, then used as highly accurate training grounds for tanks, aircraft, helicopters, SEALS, Delta Force commandos. What does this mean? It means that soon there will be no such thing as ‘unknown territory’ for the United States military. In the future – soon, very soon – the United States military will know the entire planet just like the back of its hand. It will know other countries better than those countries know themselves.”
Biography:Bruce Sterling, a writer, consultant and science fiction enthusiast, wrote or co-wrote “Schismatrix,” “The Hacker Crackdown” and “The Difference Engine” and edited “Mirrorshades: The Cyberpunk Anthology.” In the 1990s, he wrote tech articles for Fortune, Harper’s, Details, Whole Earth Review and Wired, where he was a contributing writer from its founding. He published the nonfiction book “Tomorrow Now: Envisioning the Next Fifty Years” in 2002. (Author/Editor/Journalist.)
Date of prediction: January 1, 1993
Topic of prediction: Global Relationships/Politics
Subtopic: Peacekeeping/Warfare
Name of publication: Wired
Title, headline, chapter name: War is Virtual Hell: Bruce Sterling Reports Back from the Electronic Battlefield
Quote Type: Direct quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/1.01/virthell_pr.html
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Anderson, Janna Quitney