IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - June 2016 - 88

Last Word
Christine Perakslis

The Thinking Machine,
The Occupying Machine,
The Intensive Machine
hroughout history,
technological adva-
nces have had sig-
nificant effects on
military command,
control, and logistics. In turn, military
establishments - and war - often
accelerate advances in technology.
Man has been using technolo-
gy to improve the precision, pace,
and proximity of combat through-
out time. Yesteryear, technology
afforded man new delivery mecha-
nisms for gunpowder. Today, we use
unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to
eliminate specific threats in distant
and isolated territories while military
personnel remain at safer distances.
Yet, we are now relinquishing far
more influence and decision-mak-
ing to thinking machines. Devices
are now equipped to fix, track, tar-
get, assess, and engage in the dull,
dirty, and dangerous missions. As
artificial intelligence continues to
progress, military personnel may no
longer directly control the remotely-
operated devices, but rather super-
vise independent actions of robots.
Beneficially, combat medical robots
could save lives by autonomously
identifying and retrieving wounded

Militarized Zones

Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MTS.2016.2554438
Date of publication: 2 June 2016

soldiers behind enemy lines. Yet,
society must heed the necessity for
much caution and preemptive regu-
lation. Lethal Autonomous Robots
(LARs) might progress to a level of
autonomy in which the machine is
qualified to decide whether humans
live or die.
Civilian zones have often been
used for military purposes; war pro-
paganda is nothing new. Yet today, we
march into digital military theaters
with a mere click. Cyberspace renders
warfare more accessible, unabridged,
and prevalent. Cyberwarfare is waged
daily. Combat is streamed on-line.
Militaries use social media for digital militarism to strengthen military
capability [1]. Wars are announced
on Twitter. Soldiers post photos dem-
onstrating selfie-militarism [1]. Exe-
cutions are uploaded on YouTube.
The warfare moves to the palm of our
hand. Is this lasting state of ongoing
tension an emerging mode of Digital Perpetual War? Will those of us
who are untrained and ill-equipped
civilians become susceptible to "digital combat fatigue"?
IEEE Technology and Society Magazine

Society is encountering shift-
ing paradigms relative to human-
machine interactions. Our times are
not utterly unique; similar quandaries
were encountered in such previous
times as the cybernetics movement
[2]. However, we do have noteworthy
considerations to contemplate in this
contemporary context. What is the
trajectory if we allow the amalgama-
tion of human-machine interactions
to yield a machine with far more con-
trol and influence, and humanity with
far less?

Author Information
Christine Perakslis is Associate Pro-
fessor in the MBA Program, College
of Management, Johnson & Wales
University, Providence, RI. Email:
christine.perakslis@jwu.edu.

References

[1] A. Kuntsman and R.L. Stein, Digital Militarism: Israel's Occupation in the Social Media
Age. Stanford, CA: Stanford Univ. Press, 2015.
[2] R.R. Kline, The Cybernetics Moment: Or Why
We Call Our Age the Information Age. Balti-
more, MD: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 2015.

∕

june 2016

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - June 2016