John’s Blog-o-Rama

I’m heading out to Big Sky this week for my long-awaited snowboard trip with friends Andrew Bell and Micah Collins. I’ve never been there, but I’ve heard lots of goods things about it from a number of people. The last few years I’ve only been able to get one trip in (the problem with living in Texas), but I should get to go again in a few weeks when I’m in Salt Lake City for the Novell Brainshare conference. Hopefully I’ll have lots of pictures to post on Monday when I get back.

Several interesting and related stories in the news recently: one about infantry robots that will carry weapons, another about robotic attack jets, and finally an interview with Ray Kurzweil about the technological future of the military. While this technology is really exciting, it makes me ask a number of questions: Will future wars be won by the side that has the best robots? Will countries show restraint when making a decision to go to war, when they don’t have to worry about human casualties of their own soldiers? When will this type of technology be used by the police? When will SkyNet become self-aware, and can John Connor stop it?