OFF TOPIC..

so i was reading this article:

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/01/international/worldspecial/01STRA.html

basically it talks about the side debate goin on in the midst of this war over the direction the army should start modernizing and evolving into being.

"There is a view that the nature of warfare has fundamentally changed, that numbers don't count, that armor and artillery don't count. They went into battle with a plan that put a huge air and sea force into action with an unbalanced ground combat force." -Gen. Barry M. McCaffrey

i understand what Rumsfeld wants. this sounds like a dumb analogy but it's like in starcraft and warcraft. the more units you have the more likely you will win.

duh.

but if u upgrade all your units and level up your tech tree, the same amount of basic units vs. upgraded units is no contest. a smaller "specialized" upgraded group can WRECK a larger group of regular units. that's what Rumsfeld wants, more use of specialized ops, and putting our navy and air superiority to good use. he has good intentions, we spend more money investing in technological warfare and less in human life.

but randomly i got to thinking:

there is a reason why every solider is not a NAVY seal or Green Beret or Ranger. It's not because they don't want to, it's because they don't got what it takes. Partly it's physical, but mostly it has to do with the mental aspects. you need to know how to operate sophisticated equipment, memorize protocol among other things. as much as it would be bomb to convert our standing army into special ops, it's impractical.

then i started thinking about our world, and TECHNOLOGY. i'm sure you remember from your macro classes about how technology allows you to move your production possibilities frontier. technology can equals greater productivity so you can spend ur time doing other things. so i wonder:

are we all getting smarter? will technology outrace us our minds?

i'm serious. back in the day, i get a new electronic toy like a remote control watch, a camera, a CLOCK, i would breeze through the instruction booklet and ta-da!

now...the manuals are getting friggin long as hell and it's impossible to understand the gibberish it tells u to do. i have a Sony Ericsson T-68i and i still have no idea what 50% of my phone does. it's just too much.

so are we getting smarter as a civilization? u watch movies about the future like A.I. and Minority Report, and everyone uses this high-tech equipment like it ain't no thang. i'm sorry but i don't buy it. i think many people will have serious trouble adjusting/understanding new technology even if you are born into the culture. so what if u know what combination of buttons to press into a machine that magically gives u hot fresh coffee? u'll never understand it like you would if u boiled the water in a tea kettle, added the sugar, added the cream, stirred. And perhaps that's what's going to happen.

When u eat potato chips, u ever wonder how it's made? probably not. u know it has something to do with frying potato skins or something but that's pretty much it right? so we'll just continue what we've already been doing.

sorry, this is just pure rambling now.

what i intended to conclude with is: the same way i think it's impractical for regular army soliders to all convert into special ops soliders, i think it's impractical to think everyone in this world can be trained to live in a tech-intensive world. i feel like there is this terminal tech level as a whole we can not break, but as individuals we can. so what happens in the future?

will tech keep going, and simply pass by those who can't handle it? survival of the fittess mental style?

last random thought: now it's kinda funny thinking about theories how aliens in the future are going to look all thin and crap and have psychic abilities because they rely on intellect and not on physical might and so they evolved accordingly. in our future, all the bad ass people will be the skinny dorky uber nerds, and one day perhaps they'll contract a disease they haven't found a cure for but because their physical attributes are so weak they couldn't combat it long enough to find a cure and *pOoF*. our entire civilization dies.

the end.