The Black Dog

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Underemployment: Humanity Chomping at the bit

As technology advances, people with certain skills formerly in prominence find themselves unemployed, made unfortunate and obsolete by the march of machines. But, few ever consider the unfortunate problem of those whose talents have yet to find a niche at all. What would Mozart have done before the invention of the piano? What would Van Gogh have painted before the invention of vibrantly colored paints? What sort of empire would Napoleon have had without gunpowder? The world is awash in an epidemic of underemployment, talented people without a socially acceptable outlet. All over the world humans are engaged in strange practices that could one day manifest as the single edge required to reach a new historical plateau. For better or worse, humanity is chomping at the bit of its true potential for tyranny and liberty. Old Man Burroughs warned us in an essay entitled, "The Coming of The Purple Better One" that "The aggressive southern ape will block your way to space." A symbol for the conservative warmongers, the aggressive southern ape aims to use all technology as a club and block any progressive potential.

The technology currently being researched by the government of the aggressive southern ape will ensure a more complete tyranny for the future, and reduce the time required to conquer small countries to mere hours. Soldiers riding in armored, robotic exoskeletons will run at vehicle speed and be impervious to small arms fire. Linked to a centralized command that will be able to correlate their sensory inputs to adjust combat strategy in real-time, no fleshy insurgency will stand a gooey oozing bloody chance. Semi-autonomous, all-terrain robots will provide logistical support without need for roads or direct supervision. Semi-autonomous flight drones will run constant surveillance, and provide cover fire for their semi-autonomous machine gun carrying brothers. No longer suffering the weakness of human frailty, these robots will bind together the future military into a metallic force to be feared. What underemployed talent pool, you ask, lies at the heart of these robotic storm troopers of our vast future empire? The caffeine-twitchy, obese children, mashing buttons on their video game controllers are the genocide reaping soldiers of the future. Their button clicking pudgy fingers are wearing jackboots; I can hear them coming now.

No tyranny is to be without its own underground resistance force. Indeed, the future resistance will require a human capable of pursuing supply vehicles across impossible terrain. A human willing and capable to personally plant improvised explosives on the back of an armored exoskeleton, and then dodge away from the hail storm of fifty caliber rounds spewed forth from the cyborgs ammo-hopper when it explodes. The resistance will need humans able to perform feats of daring acrobatics in urban environments to avoid surveillance drones. Who, you ask, what force of underemployed supermen can perform such feats? The impressive, fit practitioners of free running will not stand for the limits placed on them by the southern ape agenda. These future soldiers of the underground will fight off the robot hordes that are the military pipe dream of the aggressive southern ape, and help to clear our way to space.

Every time a man tosses himself from the top of a building with a parachute just to enjoy the fall, the world should think, there goes another desperate spaceman looking for employment. Any business person with an office above the fiftieth floor should not be calling the police to have these thrill seekers imprisoned by the ape administration. No! Instead they should be helping to clear a way to space. The future space laborer lives in the heart and strong stomach of the BASE jumper. In the soul of the human willing to take risks for the joy of freefall lays the space faring potential of our species. We here on space station earth need to foster their semi-suicidal risk taking for the benefit of us all. But, no, says the aggressive southern ape, the unrestrained class of climber-jumpers must be understood for the real threat they pose. People seeking to upset the ape agenda with boundary pushing practices must be stopped. In the post-911 world, these insurgent threats must be shipped off, preferably to some far away Prison Island to preserve civilian calm and bring balance and mediocrity to the population.

Infodump:

Sarcos: Robot Exoskeleton Manufacturers
Robotic Exoskeleton Story By Ed Yeates of KSL
FutureWeapons Coverage of The Crusher Robot Vehicle

Wikipedia: Free Running
Wikipedia: Parkour

BASE jumping
BASE jumpers who have died for the feeling of free fall