A wired Armed Forces will be composed entirely of veterans – highly trained veterans of military cyberspace. An army of high-tech masters who may never have fired a real shot in real anger, but have nevertheless rampaged across entire virtual continents, crushing all resistance with fluid teamwork and utterly focused, karate-like strikes. This is the concept of virtual reality as a strategic asset. It’s the reasoning behind SIMNET, the “Mother of All Computer Games.” It’s modern Nintendo training for modern Nintendo war.
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: ”Simulators still won’t fire real shells. ‘They know how to load shells,’ Col. [Jack A.] Thorpe points out. ‘That’s not what we’re trying to teach them.’ What he’s trying to teach them, in a word, is networking. The wired Army, the wired Navy, the wired Air Force and wired Marines. Wired satellites. Wired simulators. All coordinated. All teaching tactical teamwork. A wired Armed Forces will be composed entirely of veterans – highly trained veterans of military cyberspace. An army of high-tech masters who may never have fired a real shot in real anger, but have nevertheless rampaged across entire virtual continents, crushing all resistance with fluid teamwork and utterly focused, karate-like strikes. This is the concept of virtual reality as a strategic asset. It’s the reasoning behind SIMNET, the ‘Mother of All Computer Games.’ It’s modern Nintendo training for modern Nintendo war.”
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