Re: Techno-Logic

In a message dated 2/12/2003 2:13:15 PM Eastern Standard Time, 
wwagar@binghamton.edu writes:

Warren--I agree with you that part of the significance of the World Trade 
Center attacks lies in its demonstration of the possibility of new forms of 
warfare.  I am not sure how this will hasten the decline of US hegemony.  The 
emergence of new forms of warfare has always been part of hegemonic transitions.

In all likelihood, states will begin the process of learning how to adjust to 
these forms of warfare, based on the heightened destructive power made possible 
by modern technology, medicine, warfare, etc and the high concentrations of 
people (office buildings, malls).  I can imagine two ways this'll be done.  
One, turn the whole of modern society into a garrison (the direction the US has 
begun to take--although I suspect its doomed to accelerate rather than hinder 
the process of making society sabateur prone).  Two, begin the process of 
thinking through how to produce technology and living spaces not prone to this 
sort of attack (no sign of this yet, to say the least). 

But basically, I agree that transformations in the nature of warfare need to be 
incorporated into analysis of contemporary change.

Steven Sherman

>   I would only add that another logic is now at play in the world,
> which could radically compress the time needed for the United States to
> topple and for others to take its place, perhaps to topple just as swiftly
> in their turn.  I refer to the logic of technology.  Not just the logic of
> "high tech," vastly expensive and often available only to states, but also
> the power that comparatively "low" technology can give any disciplined
> individual or organized group.  The logic of the Tokyo subway gassing, the
> Oklahoma City bombing, the kamikaze attack on the WTC, and the Afghan
> mujahideen.
> 
>    It is likely that we are only in the earliest and most primitive
> stages of a whole century of sabotage, which will be able to bring down
> the most "powerful" states, no matter how well armed, taking advantage of
> the densely interlocked nature of modern economies and communication
> networks.  There have been saboteurs and guerrillas since the beginning of
> time, and most of the so-called terror wreaked in the last few years has
> come nowhere near realizing its state-busting potential.  But the fact
> that the WTC attack, for example, did significantly deepen the depression
> already in progress in the U.S. is a bellwether of things 
> to come.