As we move into the second decade of the new millennium, several significant shifts are becoming evident. Wars continue to be waged; the US is shifting emphasis from Iraq to Afghanistan, while Pakistan becomes a new flash-point.
The new President sanctioned trillions of dollars of stimulus payments for banks, while the largest auto companies (and their dependent parts suppliers) are on the verge of bankruptcy, also looking for government handouts. Giant newspapers are going out of business in record numbers; to keep them alive will they too get handouts?
The future of war
We humans are frightening animals. Throughout our existence, we have used new weapons to boost our destructive power for killing members of our own species. As the efficiency of our weapons has increased, the consequences have grown ever more extreme.
Technology advances which can be applied to the killing of other human beings are always at the forefront of our defence research. To spare our conscience, we call our aggressive actions ‘defence’. And often, our pre-emptive offence is excused as defence.
The 19th century was dominated by discoveries in chemistry, from poisons to dynamite. The 20th century brought physics, from sub-atomic to nuclear weapons. The 21st century will see expanded forms of biological warfare, and robotic weapons.
The US Department of Defence continues to invest heavily in robotic technology that will take the place of human soldiers in battle. Autonomous weapons will decide where, when, and who to kill. It may not be long before robots become standard terrorist weapons to replace suicide bombers.
Experts have already issued warnings over the threat posed to humanity by new robot weapons. Consider this moral problem: In the future, will we consider killing thousands of enemy combatants without any casualties of our own? Will that be considered ‘winning’?
We live in an increasingly complex and interdependent society. Our cities once were walled fortresses where our ancestors sought refuge. But today, we live in giant cities, supplied with piped water and electricity, with trains in tunnels and cars on elevated roadways, with fibre-optics under the pavement and airconditioned buildings with windows that cannot be opened. Our new urban centres have the vulnerability to terrorism and attack built right into them. Any modern city can be held hostage by malicious computer programming, or radioactive dirty-bombs, or infectious bacteria.
The present supply and future potential of WMDs should convince us that the time has come once and for all to bring our long, violent history of warring against each other to an end. But how? We always blame the ‘enemy’. And that enemy is us.
We live in very different evolutionary times. Our very survival as a species requires finding more ways to cooperate rather than compete. The survival of our species now means bringing an end to war as we know it. It is time to leave our history of aggression behind.
We can end War. We can create a future in which war is not only unacceptable, it is abhorrent and obsolete. What we need is a bold, unifying vision of how we can do it.
The future of newspapers
Today, only 27% of Americans pick up a newspaper, whereas 37% regularly go online for news and 66% of people get their news from TV.
It is common knowledge that newspapers are now in serious decline. One by one, large icons in the business are going bankrupt, or they are being sold off to private investors who want either to ‘milk’ the business, or convert to some other business model.
The newspaper industry cannot survive in the age of the Internet. Classifieds, their most profitable advertising, is quickly shifting online to sites like Craigslist, and display advertising is close behind. Compared with static images in newspapers, web advertising can be bright and colourful, with movement to attract attention and quick changes to match content.
The ‘killer’ difference with Internet advertising is that results are traceable through counting page views and pay-per-click. By comparison, print advertising cannot prove actual results, but can only cite total circulation.
Newspapers saw the Internet coming in the early ’90s, but free, clickable online content is hard to beat. Some think that the value of the press is much more than news; it lies in holding governments to account. Just because newspapers go away does not mean news sources will die. News sources will always find the biggest megaphone they can to get their views out. That simply is not newspapers any more.
The Internet has expanded the news process, and speeded it up. By the time a daily newspaper is actually read, the news may already have changed. The weeklies and monthlies are completely outdated as far as news is concerned; all they have left is carefully considered commentary, after the news.
Washington may be inching closer to some sort of newspaper bailout – which is nonsense. A government subsidised ‘free press’ is not free at all.
Newspapers are outdated businesses with outdated technology; printing the New York Times costs twice as much as sending every subscriber a free Amazon Kindle. Besides, printing newspapers hurts the environment (wasted paper) and delivery of millions of copies of newsprint wastes energy.
Jim Pinto is an industry analyst and commentator, writer, technology futurist and angel investor. His popular e-mail newsletter, JimPinto.com eNews, is widely read (with direct circulation of about 7000 and web-readership of two to three times that number). His areas of interest are technology futures, marketing and business strategies for a fast-changing environment, and industrial automation with a slant towards technology trends.
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