I read a lot. (You should, too.) Right now, I'm reading Kurt Vonnegut's first novel, Player Piano. This book is 70 years old, yet it feels so relevant today. I'm an IT person. I have been for nearly half the lifetime of the aforementioned book. I live in technology. I am a promoter of technology. I put food on the table by bending technology to my will in order to serve industry. (Wow! That's a pretty grandiose description of "IT Manager", huh?) Anyway, I say that to say that I don't believe tech, in and of itself, is a bad thing. However, tech can certainly be applied in bad (or even evil) ways. It also can forever change how we think about fundamental facets of human existence, including warfare. Check out this passage from the 1952 book and think about how we plan for, and carry out, military exercises in the twenty-first century. Remember; this was 1952.
"There had been plenty of death, plenty of pain, all right, and plenty of tooth-grinding stoicism and nerve. But men had been called upon chiefly to endure by the side of the machines, the terrible engines that fought with their own kind for the right to gorge themselves on men. Horatio on the bridge had become a radio-guided rocket with an atomic warhead and a proximity fuse. Roland and Oliver had become a pair of jet-driven computers hurtling toward each other far faster than the flight of a man’s scream."
If you don't know those references (Horatio on the bridge and Roland and Oliver), take the time to look them up. It will help you understand the poetry in Vonnegut's writing.
