If you have never played a massive multiplayer online game, you should. If not because you want to play for the fun, then because we will all need the skills soon. Artificial intelligence is decades away, if it's possible at all, so human brains remain the best intelligence to perform many jobs. The internet is daily making it easier to project that intelligent performance a great distance. How?
For gaming neophytes, MMO games allow players to pilot digital avatars around a virtual world via the internet. It's just like that radio-controlled car we used to play with (or admire others playing with), except the internet allows virtually unlimited range. This is called Digital Remote Operation (DRO). For example I play a game called Lord of the Rings Online which lets me to explore virtual Middle Earth as a very talented hobbit named Malfo. I live in Oklahoma, and the computers that generate the virtual world are in Boston, a distance of some 1,700 miles.
Despite that great distance, my adventures procede at breakneck speed and my human reactions are the key to success or failure. The good news is it's fun, and the better news is that if my avatar should fall in battle I can revive him and continue. Avatars don't really die, and that's the point.
The Pentagon, et. al., is fielding more and more robots to the battlefield, or perhaps more precisely, battlespace. We, the U.S. , have robot aircraft in the sky, tracked robots on the ground, and robots on and below the sea. The robots on the ground are mostly direct remote controlled from a short distance. Most of the others are partly autonomous, allowing the operators to program in travel instructions and let the drone drive itself to the target area. Significantly, none of these robots can use a weapon without an operator pulling the trigger, so in the end ALL are remote controlled.
Sooner or later, the Pentagon will combine MMO game methods with their remote controlled arsenal. Soldier-operators will use secure military networks to drive Soldier-avatars into battle, man dangerous checkpoints, or just park at intersections to keep the peace. Everything they see or hear will be recorded, coercion will be useless, and they will never fear being killed - because they can't be killed. Worse for the bad guys, destroying a Soldier-avatar just means the Soldier-operator will return all the wiser in a new robotic body.
Shortly thereafter U.S. industry will "discover" digital remote operation. Instead of buying expensive robots and expensive computers to run the robots and expensive software to run the computers and expensive technicians to keep it all running, they'll install a robot and let a human operate it from afar. Sadly, this will make it even easier to export U.S. jobs, since they don't need to build a factory near the the cheap labor force. Happily, this will open job opportunites for any American with a computer, good internet connection and experience with digital remote operations.
I'd write more, but I have to go play -- err, I mean practice my digital remote operations skills.
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