My bucket-list trip
Have you seen the movie, ‘Bucket List’? If you have not, see it. Two old guys (played by Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman) who have cancer meet in hospital and are given a few months to live. One of them makes a ‘bucket list’ – things he wants to do before he ‘kicks the bucket’. The other adds his own ideas and they decide to do everything on the list.
The list includes the Taj Mahal, the pyramids, parachute jumping, driving race cars on the Indianapolis 500 track, laugh-till-you-cry, and kissing the most beautiful girl in the world. Well, they do everything on the list before one of them dies.
I have been doing several speaking engagements recently, which I enjoy greatly. My next speeches are taking me to England, South Africa and then India. The dates include a few weeks in between. So my son David asked, “Why not go on a ‘bucket list’ trip?” And you know what – that is what I am doing. And, because I am in good health, this will be the first of many future bucket-lists.
So, just to let you know, I will be leaving this weekend, headed for England. With my brother Paul, I will visit Paris via the channel tunnel. We will go see Stonehenge and look for the Loch Ness monster in Scotland.
In mid-November, I am flying to Johannesburg to make a keynote speech at the MMP ‘08 conference (www.mmpsa.co.za). My hosts, Technews, have kindly offered to take me to see the African Big-5 (lion, leopard, elephant, rhino and Cape-buffalo) – something which is certainly worth this bucket-list trip.
Then I fly non-stop to Mumbai, India, where I will visit my brother Jude and his wife, and then travel by train (I love trains in India!) to Pune. After a few bucket-list visits in the area, we will fly to Bangalore, my home town, to celebrate my 71st birthday along with my brother John who will be 75. Along the way, I have been invited to talk about global instrumentation futures, sponsored by the local ISA sections.
I hope this will be just the first of many bucket list trips for me. I still have to visit the pyramids in Egypt, and the Holy Land, and Ayer’s Rock in Australia, and Machu Picchu in Peru, and....
Robots in war
Experts have already issued warnings over the threat posed to humanity by new robot weapons. Consider this moral problem: In the future, will countries boast about killing thousands of enemy combatants without any casualties of their own?
The US Defense Department continues to invest heavily in robotic technology that will take the place of human soldiers in battle. Unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs) have already flooded the battlefield. There are about 6000 robots in use by the Army and Marine Corps in Iraq and Afghanistan, and by October 2006 unmanned aircraft had flown 400 000 flight hours.
Currently there is always a human in the loop to decide on the use of lethal force. However, this will change: autonomous weapons are being developed, that will decide where, when and who to kill. It may not be long before robots become a standard terrorist weapon to replace suicide bombers.
This is the start of an international robot arms race. Many countries are working to develop robotic weapons, with the US having the biggest budget, expecting to spend an estimated US$4 billion by 2010.
Other countries too are working on robot weapons programmes – Europe, Canada, South Korea, South Africa, Singapore and Israel. China, Russia and India are also working on development of an unmanned aerial combat vehicle. Where is this robot-race leading?
The optimists say that defence spending always leads to advances that bring technology to other areas. Who does not long for help with household chores? After almost five years, I am still using my Roomba vacuum cleaning robot. Affordable service robots will soon be able to do heavy, dirty, monotonous or irksome tasks. Watch robot-guru Rodney Brooks’ interesting video (http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/rodney_brooks_on_robots.html).
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