Monday, April 5, 2010

Dove wings: End of War? ... because of information technologies?

Glad we have wikileaks.org, and the media. They are critical and transformative. And this video (Collateral Murder in Iraq: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/04/05/wikileaks-exposes-video-o_n_525569.html) makes me sad, too. ...

Long time UC Berkeley and USC Prof. Manuel Castells makes the argument that the nature of war has changed dramatically due to Information Technology, starting with body bags on TV during the American War in Vietnam. The American public's dislike of this changed the Pentagon dramatically. His argument is involved, but here are some rough mortality statistics from recent wars: Vietnam: 59,000 Americans and 2-3 million Vietnamese; Persian Gulf: 148 Americans, ?; American War in Iraq: 5000 Americans, 100,000? Iraqis ... The future for war is hard to predict, however more good media is best ...



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Although I explore Manuel Castells' argument that the nature of war has fundamentally changed due to information technology, and why, in transcripts on this "Information TEchnology & Society" wiki a few times, here's one example:

socinfotech.pbworks.com/April-2-2008-Soc-and-Info-Tech-class-transcript.













(http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2010/04/dove-wings-end-of-war.html - April 5, 2010)

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