Interesting interview with PW Singer, regarding his new book, "Wired for War: The Robotics Revolution and Conflict in the 21st Century."

http://news.cnet.com/8301-17912_3-10192761-72.html?tag=newsLeadStoriesArea.1#

Excerpt:

P.W. Singer, senior fellow and director of the 21st Century Defense Initiative at the Brookings Institution, went behind the scenes of the robotics world to write "Wired for War: The Robotics Revolution and Conflict in the 21st Century."

Singer took time from his book tour to talk with CNET about the start of a revolution tech insiders predicted, but so many others missed.

Q: Your book is purposely not the typical think tank book. It's filled with just as many humorous anecdotes about people's personal lives and pop culture as it is with statistics, technology, and history. You say you did this because robotic development has been greatly influenced by the human imagination?
Singer: Look, to write on robots in my field is a risky thing. Robots were seen as this thing of science fiction even though they're not. So I decided to double down, you know? If I was going to risk it in one way, why not in another way? It's my own insurgency on the boring, staid way people talk about this incredibly important thing, which is war. Most of the books on war and its dynamics--to be blunt--are, oddly enough, boring. And it means the public doesn't actually have an understanding of the dynamics as they should.

Here's the chorus:

So, is that a commentary on our eco and economic "downturns" or what?

An OpEd piece in the NYTimes by Thomas L. Friedman ( http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/08/opinion/08friedman.html?_r=2&ref=opinion ) is worth a read, some serious thoughts, and perhaps even consideration of what the future must be.  Here's a sample:

"Let’s today step out of the normal boundaries of analysis of our economic crisis and ask a radical question: What if the crisis of 2008 represents something much more fundamental than a deep recession? What if it’s telling us that the whole growth model we created over the last 50 years is simply unsustainable economically and ecologically and that 2008 was when we hit the wall — when Mother Nature and the market both said: “No more.”

We have created a system for growth that depended on our building more and more stores to sell more and more stuff made in more and more factories in China, powered by more and more coal that would cause more and more climate change but earn China more and more dollars to buy more and more U.S. T-bills so America would have more and more money to build more and more stores and sell more and more stuff that would employ more and more Chinese ...

We can’t do this anymore."

The question, of course, is when Posterous roles out paid premium accounts, will they be ProPosterous? ;)