"Jerry Pournelle - The Strategy of Technology" - читать интересную книгу автора (Pournelle Jerry)

Kissinger, convinced that the Cold War was lost, hoped to negotiate détente and come to terms
with Soviet International communism; and it was widely assumed in 1975 that the United States
had been dealt a major defeat in Viet Nam.
In 1991, just before the collapse of the Soviet Union ended the Seventy Years War, we attempted
to edit this work into a form suitable for publication in an electronic medium. This was well
before the popularity of the world wide web, and before electronic publishing tools were readily
available.
The end of the Seventy Years War brought other problems. The senior author, Dr. Stefan
Possony, lived to see the victory which he had done so much to bring about, but died shortly
after the collapse of international communism. Dr. Kane and Dr. Pournelle were involved in the
development of the space program, and particularly the renewal of the X projects which had been
canceled by McNamara in the name of Arms Control (because they were so successful at
generating new military technology. New technology wasn’t wanted by those enamored of Arms
Control strategies.)
For those and other reasons, this book languished for six years with little or no work done.
A generation of students used this book, but a new generation can’t find it; the copies still in use
in the War College are Xeroxes, the book long being out of print. Meanwhile, new threats loom
on the horizon. The Seventy Years War is over; the Technological War continues relentlessly. It
is possible that this book is needed now more than ever.
Most of the examples in this book were chosen for their impact on thoughts about the Cold War
and the threat of Soviet communism. They are now historical rather than current, and a proper
revision of this book would use examples from current threats; alas we haven’t time to do that;
nor have we time to do a proper chapter on space and space weapons. You will find THOR and
SDI in these pages, but they aren’t given their proper emphasis. No matter. The principles in this
book remain as true today as when they were written; we find little that needs explaining, and
nothing that requires an apology.
Jerry Pournelle
Studio City, California 1997
 Preface to the Electronic Edition 1991
When this book was originally published, the Cold War was very real. The United States was
winding down the agony of Viet Nam, and one heard calls for "one, two, three, many Viet
Nams" to bring the United States to her knees.
The threat of nuclear war was quite real, although it was not everywhere taken quite as seriously
as it should have been.
The Soviet Union was not seen as an evil empire, but as the representative of the wave of the
future.
The result was that the early portion of the book was devoted to convincing the readers that the
threat was real, and imparting an understanding of the nature of that threat. That was needed
then. It is less needed now; yet some of the early material also introduces the concepts of
strategic analysis and the technological war, and those concepts are vital to understanding the
principles we try to explain in this book.
A full rewrite of STRATEGY OF TECHNOLOGY would go through and pare away those
portions written to respond to the threat of the 70's and would add new examples and analyses to
fit the threat of the 90's. Alas, we have not time to do this; our choices are a 'quick fix' or not to
publish for some years.
[That paragraph was itself written in 1991; what we did then was essentially nothing. It is clearly
time to get this published in electronic form, whatever else we do.]
STRATEGY OF TECHNOLOGY was a textbook in the Service Academies for several years, and
off and on has been a textbook in the Air and National Defense War Colleges. We have reason to
believe that its arguments were useful in bringing about adoption of a high tech strategy for the