The stuff we're doing in high tech has been rendering revolutions, and the side effects of those revolutions will reverberate for centuries.

For 500 years, printing presses were uncommon, and thus the power of communications they enabled were limited to a few people. But that all changed about 20 years ago; and now nearly anyone can publish and distribute their thoughts, electronically, at negligible cost. That revolution has already wrought substantial changes and it's only going to get worse (or better, depending on your point of view).

One consequence of that is that the business model of dozens of corporations who relied on ownership of physical printing presses is rapidly becoming non-viable. Some of them have gone out of business already and the rest are trying to find ways to survive, even though most of them will not.

But it also means that the self-selected "gate keepers" of public discourse have totally lost control over the gate. Public discourse is no longer controlled by any kind of elite. And as a result, we live in interesting times.

And now for something completely different. A hundred years ago, aircraft because a significant weapon of war. By WWII the importance of aircraft became overwhelming. But building and operating a substantial air force was extremely expensive, involving huge capital investment and large numbers of men, all of which cost a great deal to maintain.

And maybe that's about to change, too. ISIS is reported to be developing an airforce based on drones, which are cheap, and readily available, and don't require a mammoth support infrastructure. Even if this report is not true, it's going to happen somewhere, by someone, and not necessarily just by a large terrorist organization.

It's possible that in ten years it will be just as cheap and common for private citizens to have their own airforce equivalents, the way we have the equivalent of printing presses now. How, for instance, do you maintain security over major buildings like the US Capitol when any crank can put a pipe bomb on a drone and send it in?

And not just major political targets. Will "pro-life" cranks start using drones to bomb abortion clinics? Will "gun control" advocates start making airstrikes against large gun stores and shooting ranges? When will we see a public official who is giving a speech get attacked by a drone? How do you fend that off? (Even if all it does is to disrupt the speech and panic the crowd, that may be enough for some attackers.)

How do you protect a big natgas storage facility against drones that don't care about barbed-wire fences?

And if it's a drone with a decent radio range, which is carrying a camera in addition to a bomb, then the attacker could be anywhere. How do you find them?

And how many will there be? This kind of attack could be launched for under $1000 by anyone with a grievance. (And there are a lot of grievances out there!)

I don't think this is going to cause as much change, or as widespread of change, as the internet did, but it's going to change a lot of things. For instance, it may become the norm for heads of state to make speeches by TV instead of in person. And just as the internet has changed the way campaigns are run, the fear of drone attack will change them too.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Weird World at 12:17 PM | Comments (9) | Add Comment
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