If military virtuality really works, everyone’s gonna want it. Now imagine two armies, two strategically assisted, cyberspace-trained, post-industrial, panoptic ninja armies, going head-to-head. What on earth would that look like? A “conventional” war, a “non-nuclear” war, but a true War in the Age of Intelligent Machines, analyzed by nanoseconds to the last square micron. Who would survive? And what would be left of them?
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: ”You can’t fault DARPA for lack of vision. Vision they’ve definitely got. There’s one matter, though, which they don’t discuss much. That’s the possibility of a virtuality arms race. If military virtuality really works, everyone’s gonna want it. Now imagine two armies, two strategically assisted, cyberspace-trained, post-industrial, panoptic ninja armies, going head-to-head. What on earth would that look like? A ‘conventional’ war, a ‘non-nuclear’ war, but a true War in the Age of Intelligent Machines, analyzed by nanoseconds to the last square micron. Who would survive? And what would be left of them?”
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