Throughout my life I have turned to Science Fiction for a glimpse of the future. I’ve come to the conclusion that Science Fiction lied to me when it said things will be cool.
“Starship Troopers” by Robert Heinlein came out in 1959, “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep” by Philip K. Dick came out in 1968, the novel “Neuromancer” by William Gibson hit the shelves in 1984. As a teenager, these were the books that shaped my ideas of what the future held. I was positive that by 2010, I would be living in a world that’s exactly like the ones presented in these great works. 2010 is just around the corner, so I thought that I’d take some time to compare reality with whatever was conjured in my teen mind.
“Starship Troopers” promised me that we’d all be jingoistic, fighting wars because we wanted to be better citizens. We’d all be powerful warriors fighting in exoskeleton suits, proving our value to a society that appreciated what we were doing because they’d been there themselves. The first problem is that we aren’t fighting bugs. It’s easy to hate a species that is so obviously evil. Humans aren’t as easy. I think that the second place where this all failed was when the people in command of the military didn’t actually serve in combat. Since our commander in chief has never been put in harms way, he doesn’t seem to value our military as much as he should. From what I’ve been given to understand, we don’t put our military in exoskeleton suits, much less even armored cars because that’s too expensive. The only time we see that kind of technology at all is when a person survives a combat with a limb missing. At that point we put on false limbs that almost exactly, but not quite, match the properties of what was lost. If we aren’t willing to help out an individual trooper until they have barely survive a battle, people aren’t going to want to be that trooper. Fewer folks are signing up to join the military then ever. So, I guess, jingoism died when the decision was made to go to war without armor, not to mention nifty exoskeletons.
Next time: "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep"
1 comment:
No kidding. Battlefield technology seems to be geared a lot more toward killing the enemy than toward protecting our soldiers. I know it's easier to destroy than to protect, but we don't seem to have come up with much beyond the flak jackets that have been around since, well, forever in one form or another.
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