Okay, this is going to be a short entry, owing to the fact that I'm currently one armed. Little mishap while cleaning the open chain on my motorcycle has left my left thumb and adjacent tissue disabled (not permanently, I'm told so that's good), but I felt like writing something, since its been a while. First of all, the thumb thing kinda happened as I was kinda dieseling my chain. Careless old me let my hand get stuck between the gear and the chain, and.. you don't wanna know.
What I wanted to talk about was the whole idea of mechanical suits, something we're all familiar with after watching Iron Man, Pacific Rim, and the like. Why is it that we're so obsessed we building these things even though we have machines that offer pretty much that with the only difference being that they're not humanoid in appearance? I don't know if everyone is, but I am certainly. If I could, I would. I think the whole obsession with it stems from the fact that they're not like a tank or a fighter jet, or even a nuclear version of those. A mech is something you can get in, and rather than using it as a tool or a vehicle, its an extension of yourself. Its almost as if you're suddenly made stronger, faster, more dangerous while remaining irrevocably you.
The only device that comes close today, is a gun. Not a cannon, not a howitzer, but a tiny old pistol. When you hold its, its almost as if you have a hand that fires supersonic projectiles. And that in itself is the only reason I can see for the need for a mech, because anything else would be better. It's not easy to balance or control, it has way too many parts with way too many vital degrees of freedom to be easily disabled, and its not safe enough given that it needs a person directly inside it. As if to prove my point, wouldn't Pacific Rim have been a much shorter story if the jaegers were drones, and the pilots were removed? Given the technology today, we can certainly enable remote access to any part of the planet allowing for remote control of these machines. And I think Iron Man 3, despite it being a giant let-down, demonstrated clearly that tony's suits took out multiple targets in the time it took him to take out a single one, when they were controlled by an AI.
Well, today's science fiction is often tomorrow's, or (considering the accelerating rate of technological progress these days) tonight's science fact. So someday we might all have flying exoskeletons that look like those from Independence Day, but the reason for their existence will be what I'm sure is our ego, not any operational merits they may have over alternate technologies.
Why? I'm bored, man. At least momentarily. Bored and armed with one hand.
Over and Out.
