In the Age of the Almighty Computer, drones are the perfect warriors. They kill without remorse, obey without kidding around, and they never reveal the names of their masters.
Interpretation
This quote suggests that drones, as advanced technological tools, embody a new form of warfare that lacks emotional engagement and accountability.
Eduardo Galeano's quote highlights the impersonal nature of modern warfare, where drones operate as autonomous agents with lethal efficiency. They execute orders with precision and without emotional or moral considerations, representing a significant shift in how wars are conducted in the contemporary era. The idea that they do not reveal their masters raises questions about accountability and responsibility in warfare, suggesting a detachment between those who issue commands and the consequences of their actions.
In practice
In a discussion about modern warfare ethics, this quote can be used to emphasize the moral implications of drone usage.
Utopia is on the horizon. I move two steps closer; it moves two steps further away. I walk another ten steps and the horizon runs ten steps further away. As much as I may walk, I'll never reach it. So what's the point of utopia? The point is this: to keep walking.
It is highly improbable that the bureaucrat will put his life on the line. It is absolutely impossible that he'll put his job on the line.
We live in a world that treats the dead better than the living. We, the living are askers of questions and givers of answers, and we have other grave defects unpardonable by a system that believes death, like money, improves people.
History never really says goodbye. History says, 'See you later.'
The more freedom is extended to business, the more prisons have to be built for those who suffer from that business.
Utopia lies at the horizon. When I draw nearer by two steps, it retreats two steps. If I proceed ten steps forward, it swiftly slips ten steps ahead. No matter how far I go, I can never reach it. What, then, is the purpose of utopia? It is to cause us to advance.
YouTube has a hundred engineers who are trying to get the perfect next video to play automatically. And their techniques are only going to get more and more perfect over time, and we will have to resist the perfect.
Mark my word - A combination airplane and motor car is coming.
Technology is far more than a method, it is a world in itself. As a method, it is superior in almost every respect. But only where it is left to itself, as in gigantic structures of engineering, there technology reveals its true nature.
The only way you multiply resources is with technology. To really affect poverty, energy, health, education, or anything else - there is no other way.
The early cyberpunk idea was that networked computers would let us do our work at home, as freelancers, and then transact directly with peers over networks. Digital technology would create tremendous slack, allow us to apply its asynchronous, decentralized qualities to our own work and lives.
Chess is far too complex to be definitively solved with any technology we can conceive of today. However, our looked-down-upon cousin, checkers, or draughts, suffered this fate quite recently thanks to the work of Jonathan Schaeffer at the University of Alberta and his unbeatable program Chinook.
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