They want professional Simulation Battle Masters. Simulation system operators. Simulation site managers. Logisticians. Software maintenance people. Digital cartographers. CAD-CAM designers. Graphic designers. And it wouldn’t break their hearts if the American entertainment industry picked up on their interactive simulation network technology, or if some smart civilian started adapting these open-architecture, virtual-reality network protocols that the military just developed … Distributed Simulation technology doesn’t have to stop at tanks and aircraft, you see. Why not simulate something swell and nifty for civilian Joe and Jane Sixpack and the kids?
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: ”What is it that Col. Thorpe and his colleagues really want? Well, of course, they want the unquestioned global military pre-eminence of the American superpower … What they really want is their own industrial base. They want the deliberate extension of the American military-industrial complex into the virtual world. They want a wired, digitized, military-post-industrial complex, reformed and recreated to suit their own terms and their own institutional interests. They want a pool of contractors and a hefty cadre of trained civilian talent that they can draw from at need. They want professional Simulation Battle Masters. Simulation system operators. Simulation site managers. Logisticians. Software maintenance people. Digital cartographers. CAD-CAM designers. Graphic designers. And it wouldn’t break their hearts if the American entertainment industry picked up on their interactive simulation network technology, or if some smart civilian started adapting these open-architecture, virtual-reality network protocols that the military just developed. The cable TV industry, say. Or telephone companies running Distributed Simulation on fiber-to-the-curb. Or maybe some far-sighted commercial computer-networking service. It’s what the military likes to call the ‘purple dragon’ angle. Distributed Simulation technology doesn’t have to stop at tanks and aircraft, you see. Why not simulate something swell and nifty for civilian Joe and Jane Sixpack and the kids? Why not purple dragons?”
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