Brains Of The Brawn

what is the word these days about technology? the smaller, the better. if james bond had to carry around a backpack to stay in touch with mi6 as opposed to talking into his watch while it was burning a hole in a lock at the same time, well we just wouldn't be as impressed. it is cool to have little things that do a great deal but take up no space and that is one of the driving factors for electronics companies to constantly work to make the most powerful tech smaller. the other plus to making smaller electronics and the like is the fact that the smaller a thing is, the more of it you can fit into the space you already have. nanotechnology already exists (somewhere, deep in area 51, i'm sure) that is to say, there is or will be tech that is comprised of microscopic machines that do specific task. the u.s. federal government funds a couple of different projects for the study and development of none other. also there is the holy grail of the computing world...artificial intelligence. there are programs out there that, for all intents and purposes, learn. there are also computers that have enough ram and rom to handle any program. we are knocking on the door of figuring out how to create an intelligence that is not simply simulating independent thought, but actually experiencing it.

two of the three aforementioned armored combat suits (acs) rely on this "micro technology" to make them feasible. heinlein's suits are all analog. they are equipped with throat mic's activated by a tongue switch and i.r. night vision goggles activated by tossing your head like a horse. this seems fairly weak when talking about two ton battle suits, but remember, the book was written nearly fifty years ago. at that time, this WAS cutting edge! the technical makeup of the servos and movement tech is avoided, but somehow, the armor anticipates what you are going to do and helps you do it.

the suits in drake's "northworld," are equipped with an informational ai unit that functions on voice command only. field of view and marking of friendly suits are some of the applications used in the book...also map overlays and identification of the quality of opponents are functions that are commonly applied. the movement of the suit is much more physical...more armor based...than any of the other suits. the contact points in the suit are padded with hide or cloth and to make the suit move, you have to apply force from the inside. the quality of the armor dictates how quickly the servos kick in when you push and how quickly the armor can move. if you are equipped with cheap armor that is not well padded and you are forced to run for any period of time, you will tear the skin off of your knees, ankles and hips doing so. mostly, though, the ai suite in northworld's armor is for information processing and contains little in the way of independent action.

the suit electronics in ringo's trilogy is, by far, the most complex and oddly enough, the closest to modern tech. these suits are a hybrid of human and alien theory and the driving force behind the processing power is a personal ai unit. these units learn as they spend more time with each suit operator. they inherit personality traits and make decisions based on how well they know their user and what they "think" is best for him or her. the processing power of these little units is amazing. they can make calls off planet--they can monitor thousands of things at once--they can organize battle plans without direct supervision of the user...that's right...the supercomputer in a watch! the actual display of these suits is preported to be the hardest thing to get used to. there is so much info coming through that it is unmanageable to the trained eye. a lot of the acs troopers don't even use an optical function, they have one of the compressed lines of information that is displayed on their hud report terrain. the complex information adjustments and organization is done through vr interface. the gloves of the suit become the pointers just like vr gloves. in the book, playing video games is encouraged to all military hopefuls...ahh, geeks taking over the world! these suits also have external speakers and hologram projectors...the enemy will see a fifty foot dragon spitting fire from ten heads while hearing "the immigrant song" by led zeppelin at 160db! the movement of acs suits depends on a tap into the neural net by the ai. the helmets don't move, but if you twitch your neck muscles like you were turning your head, the field of vision changes. there are many other aspects to the tech within these suits, but if you really want the in's and out's, you should pick up "a hymn before battle" by john ringo. if you like that kind of stuff, you will end up getting the whole series!

in actuallity, in order for these suits to work, the tech needs to be refined to the point of taking care of everything but decision making. those of you who play video games that have computer driven opponents might be wondering if even the decision making process wouldn't be better handled by the computer...oh, the implications! i will get to power sources and weapons systems a little bit later, but for now, i think i'll return to the regularly scheduled blog entries for a little while. thanks for readin!!!!!!