In the news recently, reversals in the conflict in Ukraine involving incursions deep into Russian territory by one-way attack drones. I'm rarely taken seriously in the UK, using as I do foam and timber within a culture more used to sitting on it's ass watching F1 cars built from carbon-fibre racing in an effort to accelerate global warming.
YouTubers in the US tho' often rely on Home Depot to prototype wholly new designs made possible by advances in electric motors. And this combination between modern 'soft' tech and traditional 'hard' ware is being used to advantage in places where conflict is accelerating progress, not least in war: for what seals the success of such drones is combining their use with AI that figures out how best to route them to avoid anti-aircraft fire.
For the drone above is responsible for any number of incursions and is made in what used to be wooden-furniture factories. Short of materials during WW2, the UK turned to wood to build the 400 m.p.h. Mosquito that was made by emigre Italian furniture-makers long established in London's northern suburbs. At the same time, the wooden Hurricane destroyed more of the Luftwaffe than the Spitfire, whilst the wooden-winged German V1 was infinitely more successful than the V2 rocket at a 25th of the cost.
I recently visited a factory that produced bumpers for Bentleys in view of the fact it was closing down. The machines to produce injection-moulded bumpers are half the size of a house and as heavy, and emblematic of the fact that at least in parts of the world not at war we needn't produce anything for ourselves, nor know how to do so.
But the evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins has recently speculated that technical progress may now be outstripping our ability to adapt to changes that follow, given that prior generations could have expected to live essentially unchanging lives. Aldous Huxley wrote that 20th century citizens were effectively the first to experience speed per se ~ we could be the first to experience the unimaginable speed of change.
