Carriage, carnage and commerce

The Digital Alarmist

Aside from yet another technological gizmo such as the smartphone, is there something else we can look forward to in the coming decade? There is a short answer and a long answer.

The short answer is, yes – soon you will be able to talk to friends and family even if you are atop Mt Everest or in the middle of the Sahara Desert, download movies at lightning speed and watch them at your convenience or, for that matter, have your food and medical supplies air-dropped by drones from the nearest Amazon fulfilment centre. All made possible by 6G, the next evolution in mobile communication coupled with Amazon’s plan to launch over 3,200 satellites in the coming months in order to make cloud computing and the internet available in even the remotest sites of the globe. Plus, wearable digital sensing devices such as Elon Musk’s Neuralink brain-computer chip (We will all become humanoids soon enough?) and Amazon’s Halo, a wrist band which purports to being capable of speech analysis to gauge the speaker’s moods and emotions. Amazon would like to make angels of all of us. Bezos, Musk and Zuckerberg – the new Trinity.

As for the long answer, it is a little bit more complicated since it involves three inter-related things — transportation technology, commerce and wars. Especially wars. With or without boots on the ground. Trade wars, information wars, data wars, cyber wars, space wars, etc. The playbook that is being followed was first written well over 500 years ago, with periodic updates to suit the prevailing political climes and take advantage of advancements in transport mechanisms.

Starting in the late 15th century, carracks (sailing ships) were used by the Portuguese for trade between Europe and Asia. In the 16th century, carracks were used for European trade with the newly found wealth of the trans-Atlantic trade between Europe and Africa and then the Americas. In the first half of 17th century, wind-powered galleons using sails and human-powered galleys were the principal vehicles used by the Spanish and Portuguese armadas in projecting their military prowess and safeguarding trade routes in support of commerce. In the second half of the 17th century, there were a series of naval battles among various European powers over trade and overseas colonies.

Some 150 years later, after the invention of the steam engine by James Watt, steam-powered ships enabled Britain to become the chief maritime power – it established colonies across the globe and monopolised commerce. In addition, steam-powered locomotives enabled the creation of elaborate railroad networks for the transport of goods and troops, once again to promote and protect commerce. In the latter half of the 19th century, the advent of the internal combustion engine completely changed the transportation landscape across the globe, both on land and on the waterways. The earliest advances in aviation and aviation warfare in the first half of the 20th century can also be attributed to the internal combustion engine.

In tracing the evolution of computer technology over the past 200 years, we can also discern a similar pattern. Funded by the British Navy, Charles Babbage’s efforts to automate mathematical calculations led to his designing the Difference and Analytical Engines — steam powered computers — in the mid-19th century. This gave way to the invention of electromechanical computers in the 1930s and 1940s in Germany and the US, largely motivated by efforts to improve the accuracy of bomb delivery systems during World War II. Three decades later, electronic computer-controlled command and control systems, especially in defence, became standard and this, in turn, spurred the development of computer-to-computer communications (the US Defense Department’s ARPANET), which has evolved into today’s internet.

Whether it is transporting physical goods, such as food, using vehicles (cars, ships, planes) on the one hand, or transporting data using wired and wireless channels (fibre optic cables, satellites) on the other, they aren’t really all that different, are they?

Keeping the shipping lanes open in the South China Sea, banning or not banning TikTok, and keeping the data channels open on the internet – you see any difference? I don’t.

All in support of commerce. And wars. Of all kinds.