Facial recognition

[DreamCloud]

Many years ago a professor in a class called Religion, Reason, and Man, handed out a historic paper that was describing the end of humanity due to the creation of a new weapon. We were asked what that weapon was. The answers were gunpowder and atomic bombs. The correct answer was the crossbow.

Today's fears are tomorrow's non-issues.

 

[sr71plt]

Many years ago a professor in a class called Religion, Reason, and Man, handed out a historic paper that was describing the end of humanity due to the creation of a new weapon. We were asked what that weapon was. The answers were gunpowder and atomic bombs. The correct answer was the crossbow.

Today's fears are tomorrow's non-issues.

Although the lethal capability of each progressive weapon does progressively cover more people and more ground and tend to spoil the land for use far more than earlier weapons did. So this can only be stretched so far without getting a horse laugh.

I think more appropriate to the issue would be to dig up the declarations of how microfilm or the eight-track cartridge would be the ultimate record retention systems.

 

[Handley_Page]

Many years ago a professor in a class called Religion, Reason, and Man, handed out a historic paper that was describing the end of humanity due to the creation of a new weapon. We were asked what that weapon was. The answers were gunpowder and atomic bombs. The correct answer was the crossbow.

Today's fears are tomorrow's non-issues.

Only because the "Rulers" make damn sure that something better will serve them

 

[HandsInTheDark]

Many years ago a professor in a class called Religion, Reason, and Man, handed out a historic paper that was describing the end of humanity due to the creation of a new weapon. We were asked what that weapon was. The answers were gunpowder and atomic bombs. The correct answer was the crossbow.

Today's fears are tomorrow's non-issues.

You've got that exactly backwards. The crossbow did destroy civilization, and continues to. It was the power behind the Han armies in Asia, and another step in the ongoing and almost continual arming and warring on the Asian continent. Ask yourself if modern China and Russia would be as belligerent today if they didn't have a few thousand years of bellicose relations under their belt, powered in large part by that exact technology. The crossbow stayed a mainstay of "kill them and take their stuff" right up until 1500, when black power weapons started showing up. Black powder caught on, despite the risks of using it, because it was better at killing than crossbows; the bow family of weapons basically drove the creation of black powder weapons. The gun lead to larger munitions. When making big bangs with gunpowder became widespread and it was necessary to kill yet more people, you got high explosives, and when that didn't win wars anymore you moved to chemical toxins, atomic bombs, and bioweapons - all with transcontinental range. It's just bigger crossbows with nastier things being delivered...

The human race was in trouble the moment people stopped using slings and pointed sticks on prey and started using them on each other.

Eventually we'll have something deadly enough to literally threaten whole continents - it's possible to design such things with very large mirrors in space, for example. Consider that, and then consider that inevitably, all weapon technology gets used. Mankind collectively cooking its own goose is not science fiction, it's the inevitable result of a progression that started with pointy sticks. Yesterday's nightmares are tomorrow's inevitabilities. Human nature doesn't change, we just get better at demonstrating the cost of short term thinking.

"Turn the other cheek" got laid down as a suggestion because quite literally, no other suggestion is viable.