No one will be surprised by the Salon piece linked here on robots being the weapons industry's next bit profit center. What ought to scare us the most, however, along side the enhanced slaughter this might provide, is the ability to make war seem less costly in terms of our own boyz and girls sent to the front. Which, with the right controls on what gets seen from the front, ought to make wars ever so much more ignorable to the American public.
Of course, you might think that the Internet will make keeping that very slaughter out of public view impossible, but I would give this cautionary. Think of this scenario (which I used in my book The Light of Creation): At some point its going to occur to the powers that be that providing free Internet universally will be in their interest (I called it America Net). Free, very high speed, and the more super, realistically virtual the better. Even to the point of subsidizing the development of direct neural interconnect. And it will have the best games, the best porn, and any other diverting excess you could possibly imagine; with the only thing it won't have being anything that might kill the buzz. And the only bottom line will be to simply go with the flow.
And don't worry. You will either be made to want to work (no matter how shitty it might by) by the seamless product placement in all of the diversions (because there will no longer be outright commercials), or you will simply virtualize yourself to death and thereby no longer pose a problem. Not even crime will be much of an option eventually as everything will have a camera in it, and there will be no shortage of sentry drones re purposed for the police. Truly a Brave New World.
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