Six years from now, it is predicted that the fastest supercomputer’s computational capabilities will exceed that of the human brain. And while predictions farther into the future are guesswork at best, a thousand dollar laptop could exceed the computational capability of the entire human race by 2049. Information and technology is being created at an exponential rate, so much so that it took the internet only four years to reach an audience of 50 million, compared to thirteen years for television, and thirty eight years for radio. Now, what does this all mean? Technology and the internet have become the workhorse of the global economy and the staple of civilization as we know it. The relentless advance of technology has rendered each previous generation obsolete, and the question of where does this all end becomes much more concrete.Soon, we will become slaves to our own technology, unless we start recognizing its limitations. Technology can save us or enslave us, but it is our creation alone and we must teach its mysteries to our kids while they’re young, to ensure not only responsibility but our humanity as well.

War is something very human that has been drastically changed by technology, and the future promises more of the same. The U.S. Navy is currently testing an electromagnetic rail gun, with the help of the British Royal Navy, that can fire a forty pound ferrous metal slug over two hundred miles in six minutes or less, traveling at speeds over Mach 7 and capable of accurately hitting and subsequently vaporizing it’s target via kinetic force alone. A rail gun uses an electromagnetic field to hurl a ferrous metal object at unbelievably fast speeds, without using any sort of explosive fuel or mechanics.

A destroyer equipped with only one of these rail guns can pummel any target within a two hundred mile radius with twelve rounds a minute. According to the Navy, the rail gun won’t be “deliverable” until 2015. The prototype rail gun, according to Popular Science, is rated to fire at 32 mega joules but the engineers can only fire it at a measly ten mega joules without causing the whole apparatus to shatter. To understand how much energy it takes to fire a rail gun at thirty two mega joules, a single joule equals the energy required to lift one Newton [about 0.22 pounds] one meter off the ground. A mega joule, or one million joules, would lift one Newton one million meters or rather propel one Newton one million meters in a single direction, such as a ballistic trajectory. Imagine buildings and city blocks destroyed without any explosions, any radiation, all from somewhere too far away to even fight against. Rail guns will certainly change the face of war, and in my opinion, are almost as bad as nuclear weapons. Add to this deadly new weapon the amount of research and development on robotics and unmanned aircraft systems, by 2010 defense spending on these systems is expect to reach 3.76 billion in the United States alone, according to Popular Science. In the war of tomorrow, robots will fight for us and with us, and modern armor will not suffice. An object traveling at Mach 7 is pretty hard to stop, even with our space age ceramic armor and explosive-reacting tank armor. We live in an already deadly world of super viruses, global warming, terrorist attacks, globalization, and nuclear atonement, but the future will rapidly shatter our modern conceptions of everything we take for granted and for fear. Education however, remains our one and only hope. Because with responsible and innovative approaches to technology, we can begin to prepare ourselves for problems we don’t even realize are problems yet. As Einstein said, “we can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.” So please, educate yourself about technology. For more information, check out “Did You Know 2.0” on YouTube, and feed your mind.