N1-K1: how long from fiction to fact?
Posted: Mon Feb 06, 2012 7:20 pm
After watching a CURRENT TV documentary on Japan and how robotics plays an increasing role there, I thought about the 1980's Nikki episode on Astro Boy.
Has it ever occurred to anyone just how fast the pace of robot technology has been in weapons development? We're a scant 65 years from the first German guided radio bomb to the most advanced UAV weapons system in existance today, in fact the pace of robotics in weapons development has excellerated expodentially over the past decade.
Which led me to think...how long before the frightening fiction of Nikki becomes a fact? And what then if such a robot lands in the hands of people who have little to no thought for a human life?
Back in the 1970's, one of the Irish Republican Army's most fiendish methods for bombing people in Belfast Ireland was hiding nail bombs in department store display dolls. What's to say at some point in the future you're walking through Manhattan and some person calls you over to their car, says hello then explodes with a 20-kiloton nuclear warhead?
Suddenly that Astro Boy episode doesn't feel so fictional does it?