Elon University

Archives: Expert Predictions

War is Virtual Hell: Bruce Sterling Reports Back from the Electronic Battlefield

They want professional Simulation Battle Masters. Simulation system operators. Simulation site managers. Logisticians. Software maintenance people. Digital cartographers. CAD-CAM designers. Graphic designers. And it wouldn’t break their hearts if the American entertainment industry picked up on their interactive simulation network technology, or if some smart civilian started adapting these open-architecture, virtual-reality network protocols that the military just developed … Distributed Simulation technology doesn’t have to stop at tanks and aircraft, you see. Why not simulate something swell and nifty for civilian Joe and Jane Sixpack and the kids?

War is Virtual Hell: Bruce Sterling Reports Back from the Electronic Battlefield

A wired Armed Forces will be composed entirely of veterans – highly trained veterans of military cyberspace. An army of high-tech masters who may never have fired a real shot in real anger, but have nevertheless rampaged across entire virtual continents, crushing all resistance with fluid teamwork and utterly focused, karate-like strikes. This is the concept of virtual reality as a strategic asset. It’s the reasoning behind SIMNET, the “Mother of All Computer Games.” It’s modern Nintendo training for modern Nintendo war.

War is Virtual Hell: Bruce Sterling Reports Back from the Electronic Battlefield

The Distributed Simulation Internet, projected for the turn of the century, is to be a creature of another order entirely from SIMNET. Ten thousand linked simulators! Entire literal armies online. Global, real-time, broadband, fiber-optic, satellite-assisted, military simulation networking. Complete coordination, using one common network protocol, across all the armed services. Tank crews will see virtual air support flitting by. Jet jockeys will watch Marines defend perimeters on the pixelated landscape far below. Navy destroyers will steam offshore readying virtual cruise missiles… and the omniscient eye of trainers will watch it all. And not just connected, not just simulated. Seamless.

Crafting Software That Will Let You Build a Business Out There

One measure of the success of the cybersoftware effort will be how quickly the new programs seem to vanish. If businesses are to operate efficiently online and consumers are to enjoy their time in cyberspace, the programming that makes it all possible must be invisible. Only then will those visions of life in cyberspace come true.

Crafting Software That Will Let You Build a Business Out There

“Passing your credit-card number over the Internet today is like getting dressed with the light on when it’s dark outside,” says Richard K. Crone … “This could potentially be a fantasy for hackers worldwide,” says Joel Friedman. “Consumers are hearing it’s insecure, so stay away from it,” says[Edward] Hogan. “We have to go through a PR effort to undo that.”

Crafting Software That Will Let You Build a Business Out There

The most critical need … is to create a facade of user-friendly software for the globe-spanning Internet. A jumble in interlinked networks, the Internet includes some 4 million “server” computers, housing incalculable volumes of all sorts of information. But because there is no central control over the Net, there is also no master index. That has kept the Net largely a playground for the techno-intelligentsia.

Crafting Software That Will Let You Build a Business Out There

Programmers are harnessing the power of cyberspace – to help businesses and consumers meet in an electronic marketplace and to create the information systems for the virtual corporations – and communities – of the 21st century. The players that come up with these programs could wind up at the head of a new world order – where computing, entertainment, and communciations merge. “It’s like the land rush in Oklahoma. The best spot in the valley goes to the one who gets there first.”