SERIOUS WONDER | Advanced Technology and the Second Amendment (Part 2)

Editor’s Note: This article is part two of the series ‘Advanced Technology and the Second Amendment’. Read Part One here.

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[easyazon-image align=”left” asin=”0815705107″ locale=”us” height=”160″ src=”http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41PZDwCBxWL._SL160_.jpg” width=”107″]So the broader trend of increasing-power-in-fewer-hands (seen vividly in how the scale of destructive power that can be wielded by a single person increases throughout the history of war, from sword to gun to bomb to warhead) may level things out by itself, whether singly or in tandem with increasing transparency. Consider ubiquitous nanotechnology; when resource-constraints and processing/manufacturing constraints are removed, what stops the average person from being as equipped as the average soldier, or the average riot-policeman? I’m sure that when the first Atomic Bomb was dropped, very few people thought that so much destruction could have been unleashed by one bomb. Now we take for granted the fact that such things are possible.

Conclusion, confusion, contusion:

So, should we give the 2nd amendment a final shot to the head on the grounds that its most called-upon utility has been obviated by technological growth– or should we level the laying-field from the opposite direction, and give every man, woman and child access to the latest in cutting-edge weapons-of-mass-destruction?

[easyazon-image align=”left” asin=”B0000BEWO6″ locale=”us” height=”160″ src=”http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51FRPTH972L._SL160_.jpg” width=”141″]Probably neither. The transformative potentials of high technology makes such 2-tone options seem pale and inadequate. The real message is probably that technologies can readily disrupt and rupture what seem to be quiet raptures weighty with wait and at rest. That futures often refute and that the past is quick to become the post. That technologies transform, and that we must be on constant guard against our precast foundations and preconceptions, which can turn at any moment with a little technological momentum underfoot; while they may have made sense at one point, sensibility was made to be remade. Culture is a seismic landscape, and what we take for law, whether physical or man-made, always remains terribly (and thankfully) uncertain in the face of technologies’ upward growth.

We must always remain open to facing the new, and to remaking our selves and our world in response thereto, even if on the face of it the victory of our change seems like our defeat. Technology changes the circumstances, and we cannot rely on tradition and unflinching law to provide the answer. We must always be ready to lift the veil and have another look at the available options when new technologies come into play, and always remain willing to will our own better way. Certainty is a fool’s crown, and one that the new will likely always be fast to dash to the ground.

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Image Source: Flickr

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October 1, 2013 By Franco Cortese

About the author

Franco Cortese is a Futurist, Author, Editor, Poet and Speaker. He writes for several publications including Institute for Ethics & Emerging Technologies, H+ Magazine, and Immortal Life Magazine. He is on the coordinating committee for Zero State, and is an Adviser for Lifeboat Foundation. He is also a supporting member of the World Future Society, Humanity+, the Institute for Ethics & Emerging Technologies, Foresight Institute, Immortality Institute for Unlimited Lifespans, London Futurists, Zero State, British Longevity Society, Mormon Transhumanist Association, Turing Church, Immortalist Society, Healthy Life Extension Society and the Methuselah Foundation.