The call to action – this is the important part…

The debate

David E….
What would I do if I knew I could not fail?
I would shutdown DARPA and redirect their entire budget into public schools and healthcare. While at it make the “nerds” who think it’s cool (or a good career move) to create bomb delivery systems, go live on the ground in the places America has subjected to “shock and awe” campaigns.

My rebuttal…
“I would shutdown DARPA and redirect their entire budget into public schools and healthcare.” I guess you haven’t heard that DARPA has created a prosthetic arm that will help millions of amputees and exoskeleton legs that will help both paralyzed and elderly people walk again. Or you may not know that many children, especially poor children and children in developing nations are now able to use the Internet that DARPA pioneered to gain access to vast amounts of learning material that had been previously unreachable.

David E….
People like Regina Dugan are dangerous because they rationalize what they’re doing as “for the greater good” all the while creating weapons that shouldn’t exist and that no one should be allowed to deploy on this all-too-small planet. She takes a question that has a potentially a very positive implication, and weaves it into a case for creating mass destruction. People are very good at separating themselves from the consequences of their actions.

And then when challenged retreats behind the lame “we just invent the stuff” excuse. This same rationale was used by the Nazi’s who built the death camps. “We were just doing our jobs.” These people need to take a long hard look in the mirror.

My rebuttal…
“People are very good at separating themselves from the consequences of their actions,” or the implied statement that you should not invent things that will be used to ill. That is the oldest, most tired excuse used to justify inaction and stagnation. How can we know today how the new technology we create will be used in the coming decades? Could the inventors of the Internet have known it would be used as both a major commerce platform as well as a major piracy platform? Did the inventors of GPS know it would be used to as a way to guide missiles as well to guide regular cars or save lives by dispatching the closest ambulance to a medical emergency? What about the autonomous cars DARPA is developing? How many millions of blind, elderly, and disabled people will regain their freedom my taking back control of their own transportation?

David E….
Regina Dugan’s words remind me of Donald Rumsfeld when he talked about “surgical bombing” in Iraq. (As if there’s anything precise about that kind of payload.) But this is how people think… those who sit safely behind a computer screen while nameless people somewhere else are being killed, incinerated, blown up with high-tech weapons created through the help of same said computer screens. “If we only build bombs to look like hummingbirds then we can get even more surgical.” Madness.
When are people going to wake up to the fact that what happens “there” always makes it back to “here?” That what we fail to learn from “then” will come back to “now” and thus shape the future. The same one we all must live in.
True freedom doesn’t require weapons of war. We will come to understand this or we will all perish. Do we kill those we disagree with, come to see as a threat, or do we ask them what it is they too want from their precious life?

My rebuttal…
None needed. The last two paragraphs of David’s comment are more of a rant, and are so far outside of the topic of Regina’s presentation that he may as well be debating the benefits of thin vs. thick crust pizza.

My closing remarks…

The type of person I consider to be “dangerous” is the person who will embrace his own fear and ignorance to keep humanity from making the attempt to evolve and improve itself. It is each person’s responsibility to choose how he or she will use things, for good or for ill. You can either use water to save a person wandering in the desert or drown him. There is risk in everything we do. The only thing that is absolutely certain is that nothing will improve without action and innovation.