OEB Berlin… AI, video, learning analytics, data, and schnapps!

Been going for many years… and like the vibe… fruity mixture of tech, academic, government from 73 countries. There's the added attraction of Berlin, a Christmas market right across the street and free drinks at the Marlene Bar!

Gave three talks, all on AI theme… AI and ethics (the overblown hysteria), Learning Analytics (how to and real examples), Video and AI (research and how to). A number of the sponsors were companies that use AI and it was a solid theme this year, rightly, as it has already changed why, what and how we learn.

As is usually the case at conferences I found the smaller presentations and conversations more useful than the keynotes. Great start with Julian Stodd, who was his usual articulate and incisive self. He talked about the weirdness of HR trying to ‘impose’ values and compliance training on people, attacking people’s sense of self and agency. But one phrase that really resonated with me was the ‘humility to listen’. There’s a lot of depth to those three words…

The opening keynotes were a trio of very different fruits. The Max Planc/MIT guy gave a solid talk, showed the Frey and Osborne report (2013), but got the date wrong – it wasn’t 2016 – this matters as it was a paper that predicted the 47% jobs at risk of automation over a decade in the US. We are 6 years in and there is pretty much full employment in the US. Toby Walsh eviscerated this report and talked at this conference two years ago – so we seemed to be going backwards. The Chinese guy was clearly giving a sales pitch but at least he had data and citations to back up his case. Audrey Watters gave her standard  ‘it’s largely agitprop, ideology and propaganda’ replete with soviet posters. Oddly she mentioned being jeered at a summit in Iceland. I was there - it was a very small audience and the first question she was asked (by a woman) was whether she was throwing the baby out with the bathwater, neither was there a 3D cat. She rightly showed some claims that were unsubstantiated but out of context and actually several are evidence-based but Audrey’s was so keen to show that everyone else was ideological that she missed the fact that hers was the most ideological talk of the three. But oh how academe clapped.

The keynotes on the second day (HE session) tackled the future of HE. Professor Shirley Alexander showed the shocking costs, debts and default rates of HE – it is basically out of control on costs. But her solution, literally on the next slide was a huge, spanking new building they’ve just erected and some writing feedback software. I was convinced by nether the erection nor software, which has been around for decades. Bryan Alexander is always up for some fun and opened his talk in a Death Metal voice. Had a great conversation with Bryan about AI afterwards and he did the futurist thing – 3D printing, drones etc…didn’t really see any scalable solutions that tackled the cost issue.

One feature of learning conferences is a general refusal to face up to political issues such as cost and inequality. It is assumed that education is an intrinsic good, no matter what the cost.  No reflection on WHY Brexit, Trump, Gilet Jaunes and other political upheavals are happening, only a firm belief that we keep on doing what we do, no matter the cost. This is myopic. Bryan Caplan tried with his keynote last year, with real evidence, but once again we seemed to have gone backwards. I had a ton of conversations in the bar, in restaurants and over coffees on these issues. A refreshingly straight talk with Mirjam Neelen was one of many.

I liked the practical sessions on learning analytics. It is complex subject but offers a way forward that builds on a platform of data that can be used to describe, analyse, predict and prescribe learning solutions. With smart software (AI), it frees us from the fairly static delivery of media, which online learning has done for over 30 years. Speaking with the wonderfully named Thor and Christian Glahn, we opened up the world of xAPI, LXPs, LRSs and adaptive learning. Here lies some real solutions to the problems posed by the keynotes. 

Sure there are ethical issues and I gave a session explaining that AI is not as good as you think and not as bad as you fear. We went through a menu of ethical issues: Existential, employment, bias, race, gender and transparency. Every man, woman and their dog is setting up and ethics and AI committee, pouring out recommendations and edicts, often based on a thin understanding of ethics and the technology. Many seem designed to give people an excuse to avoid it and do nothing.

Enjoyed Mathew Day’s session on the use of video which is uploaded to the International Space Station, which they use just before they do a task. That’s what I call cosmic, performance support. I was on just before him and showed the evidence in learning theory on why video on its own is rarely enough for deep learning, as well as key evidence on what makes a good learning video, much of it counterintuitive – POV, slower pace, edit points, not so much talking heads, maximum length, adding active learning and so on.

So many interesting chats with people I knew and met for the first time. What I did walk away with was a sense that people are waking up to the possibilities of AI in learning, especially for teaching, Henri Palmer of TUI gave a great case study, showing how one can deliver a large project, super-fast at a fraction of the cost using AI created online content. Great to hear that her team won a Gold Award for that project the night before in London. 

Final dinner in Lutter and Wegner, an old German restaurant was great. Harold did his pitch-perfect Ian Paisley impression at full volume with much clinking of glasses… wine and schnapps. When you’re sitting next to people from Norway, Poland, France, Belgium and Trinidad – you can’t go far wrong.

BIG thanks to Channa, Astrid, Rosa, Rebecca, Harold and the team for inviting me… open people who not only do a great job organising this event but are also open-minded enough to encourage critical thinking…

Drones - why they really do matter....

Drones are an underestimated technology. As they whizz about, quietly revolutionising film making, photography, archaeology, agriculture, surveying, project management, wildlife conservation, the delivery of goods, food, post, even medicines and into disaster zones, we will be seeing a lot more of them.

This year I've been in Kigali, Rwanda chairing an event an E-learning Africa on drones, as their use in Africa clearly benefits from the ‘leapfrog’ phenomenon – the idea that technology sometimes gains from being deployed where there is little or no existing service or technology. Rwanda and other African countries are already experimenting with drones in everything from agriculture to medical supply delivery. I also spoke at the Battle of Ideas on drones in November.
Like any technology they are a force for good but also have a downside. Like cars, we all drive them, but 1.3 million people die gory deaths every year in car crashes and that figure doesn't include the injured. Almost all tech has a downside.
So it is with drones. They saves lives in Rwanda by delivering blood but are used to kill in the Middle East and disrupt entire airports for days, as in Gatwick.

Drones and AI

What makes them  interesting is the intelligence they now embody. First their manoeuvrability. My friend is a helicopter pilot and he rightly describes a helicopter as a complex set of moving parts, every one of which wants to kill you. A drone, however, has sophisticated algorithms that maintain stability, can set it off on a mission and return it back to the spot it left from at the press of a button.  But it is the autonomy of drones that is really interesting. Navigation and movement are being aided by image recognition of the ground and other objects, to avoid collision. Even foldable, consumer drones now have anti-collision sensors on all sides, zoom lenses. They are the self-driving cars of the air. 

MIT is even using VR environments to allow drones to learn to fly without expensive crashes. They literally fly in an empty room filled with VR created obstacles and landscapes. Drones can not only learn to fly using AI, it can use AI in many other tasks. It can take different forms of AI into the sky – image recognition, route calculation. (Think about this for a moment. Drones can fly autonomously. This makes them incredibly dangerous, when used by people who want to cause chaos or do harm.)

Drone abuse

Image recognition also enables surveillance. A $200 drone can hover, shoot video of a crowd and use AI to identify potential and actual violent poses, such as strangling, punching, kicking, shooting, and stabbing. These are early systems but their use and abuse by police-forces and/or authoritarian regimes is a cause for worry.

Google recently gave into pressure from its own employees not to use its AI (Tensorflow) in Project Maven – image recognition from military drones. And let’s not forget that drone industry is, at present, largely part of the military industrial complex. The IBOT (Internet Battle of Things) is a thing. The military are already envisaging battles between autonomous battle objects – drones and other autonomous vehicles and robot soldiers.

On the delivery side, drones are also a pretty effective drug mules into prisons. This has become a real problem, turning jails into markets for drugs, where the prices are x10 higher. And for a truly petrifying view of payloads drones in warfare, watch Slaughterbots. With use comes abuse.

In developed world?
First, it is doubtful that drones will be used to deliver anything in complex, urban environments.  It is certain that flying taxi drones will not take off. On drone taxis, as Elon Musk says, we already have them, they're called helicopters. You need a big beast of a drone to carry people and the physics of this means lots (and I mean lots) of noise - that's why they're a non-starter. The social acceptance problem is huge. However, for specific line of sight uses by firefighters, police and so on the uses are clear.
Drones are not integrated into the airspace and that airspace is getting pretty full in the developed world. Pizzas and Amazon books are not going to be delivered to your home any time soon. There is safety, regulatory and social issues to overcome. Technology is always ahead of sociology and regulations. In the case of drones the lag is enormous.
Technically drones can deliver things safely and never collide. However, the potential for problems is through the roof. They are limited to 'close to pilot' uses. Think of them as flying mobile phones, as they use much the same tech. They have not come from the world of aviation. In terms of regulation, we still see drones over crowd (illegal) and close to roads (illegal).
So what about irresponsible pilots? Those with ill-intent can interfere with drones, not only blocking signals but even falling them into thinking they're somewhere else. The potential for interrupting normal business is huge as it the potential for delivering harmful payloads - think Scripal, think dirty bombs.... We may have spent £100 billion on Trident but our air traffic can be brought to a standstill by the mere presence of a £200 drone.
One solution is to demand that drones have internal intelligence that keeps them safe - that they cannot go near airports/planes,  crash into crowds (find safe place if fault) and so on. Sound good but this is not easy. Drones, like your car, or aircraft, uses GPS. That's fine when there's a driver or pilot but in a drone it doesn't work. GPS can be jammed, and drones even told that they're somewhere else. You can build one for tens of dollars from YouTube videos.
Of course, what many don't realise is that almost all commercial airliners are, in effect drones. They fly and land autonomously with the pilots doing mostly monitoring. There may be a future of autonomous drones, but it's way off without failsafes.
In the developing world? 

There two main uses of drones:

1. Imaging

2. Delivery

Although some other niche uses are being developed, such as delivery of internet access and window cleaning, the main uses are as an eye in the sky or dropping stuff off.

Action shots of skiing, surfing, mountain biking, climbing and many sports has changed the whole way we see the events. So common are drone shots, that we barely notice the bird’s eye view. Action shots that used to require expensive helicopters are now much easier and you can do things with drones that no one would have dared do in a helicopter. Even for ground action shots, a drone can add speed and sensation. In an interesting turn of events, Game of Thrones producers have had the problem of too many drones. In addition to their own drones for shots, they’ve had to content with snooper drones trying to get previews. But let’s turn to real life…

Already used in crop spraying, there are other obvious applications in imaging to show irrigation, soil, crop yield, pest infestations. Drone imaging can see things on scale, which the normal eye cannot see, with it spectral range. This should help to increase yields and efficiency. The Global Market for agricultural drones is expected, in one report, to reach $3.69 billion by 2022.

Animals close to extinction in areas too large to keep them safe from poachers. Drones are being used to track and look out for these animals. Tourist companies are using drone footage to encourage Safari holidays. In general, environmental care is being helped by being able to track what is happening through cheap drone tech.

Large building projects or mines are being managed with the help of drones that can help survey, plan, then track vehicles, actual progress and build. It’s like having a project management overview of the whole site whenever it is needed with accurate realtime data. When built, drones are also being used to inspect roofs and even sell properties.

Collision tolerant drones are being used, not in the open air, but in confined spaces, such as tunnels, to inspect plant and pipes. They are small enough to get to places that are too tight or dangerous for humans.

Delivery drones

Amazon, Google, DHL, FedX and dozens of other retailers have been experimenting with drone delivery. All sorts of issues have to be overcome for drone delivery to become feasible, including: reliability, safety, security, theft, cost, training, laws and regulations. But there seems to be an inevitability about this, especially if they become cheap and reliable. That reliability depends very much on AI in terms of flight, locations and actual delivery.

In healthcare, medicines, vaccines, blood, samplescan all be delivered by drone. Defribrillators with live feeds telling individuals nearby how to operate them have been prototypes in the Netherlands and the US. A company in the US has already delivered FAA approved water, food and first aid kit in Nevada. Switzerland are creating a drone network for medical delivery and

Zipline, in Rwanda, have partnered with the government to deliver blood and other medical supplies to 21 facilities. The benefits in term of speed, cost, accurate delivery and saving lives is enormous. Sudden, unexpected disasters need fast, location specific drop-offs of medical supplies, food and water.

The delivery of ordered items is already being trialled with pizzas, books and everything else that is relatively small, light and can be dropped off at a specific location. The Burrito Bomber, Tacocopter and Domicopter deliver fast food. IBM even have a patent for delivering coffee by drone.

Delivering the post by drone makes sense and trials have been done in Australia, Switzerland, Germany, Singapore and Ukraine. Again speed, reliability and cost are the appealing factors.

Conclusion

Tech can be used and abused. Drones are the perfect example, already killing machines, they also have the potential to save lives. The good news, is that in Africa, the attention is on the latter. In the developing world, safety, social and regulatory environments mean that little is possible commercially.

From Rift Valley to Oculus Rift (7 lessons learnt at eLearning Africa)

A mind blowing week in central Africa at the eLearning Africa Conference in Uganda, where I was flipped so many times, both mentally and physically. My mind was repeatedly flipped when I saw the wrong solutions being forced into the wrong contexts. Conversely, I saw unexpected solutions in the right context. Physically, I was flipped into the Nile on a White Water raft trip – more of that later.

Technology, learning and Africa

My opening gambit in a talk to Ministers from across Africa was to show that we were not far from the Rift Valley, where the first technology was invented by man – the stone axe (see full article on its importance as a learning technology). This handheld device was to last for the next 1.5 million years and is a window into the mind of early man. It showed, intent, planning, ability to find resources, hand-eye co-ordination and a culture of teaching and learning. We were close to the source of the Nile, and it was in Egypt that the first writing was invented (see full article), the big-bang in learning technology, far more important then the printing press. Papyrus technology was also invented in Africa (see full article). So what does Africa need now?

1. Innovation is not innovation unless it is sustainable

In asking what Africa needs now from technology and learning I believe we must stick to a simple mantra – that innovation is not innovation unless it is sustainable. Sugatra Mitra’s Holes in the walls are now just that – holes in walls, with no computers, no lasting impact, a waste oftime and money. Tablets may prove to be less than useful, especialy Negroponte's Ethiopian experiment. Before any initiative is funded or started, do a cost-effectiveness and sustainability analysis.

By sustainability I mean the big 6:

People
Sustainable stakeholders
Sustainable learners
Sustainable change management
Pedagogy
Sustainable teacher skills
Sustainable design
Culture
Sustainable culture

Resources
Sustainable electricity/Sustainable wiring
Sustainable resources
Cost
Sustainable on cost
Technology
Sustainable technology
Sustainable maintenance

2. Infrastructure not devices

Flip the mindset away from devices to infrastructure, and focus spending on bandwidth so that accessibility and prices fall. $50 a month for an unreliable 126K connection is way too high. This means deregulation and getting networks built along with free tariffs, such as Wikipedia Zero, for educational content. Economic growth is closely correlated with internet penetration.

3. Projects not pilots

Africa is littered with short-term, funded pilots. A donor-led, pilot mentality means too many pilots are really ‘doomed to succeed’ and fall flat when finished. Pilots are thinly disguised research projects, often led by academics whose real goal is simply publication not pragmatism. Fund projects that have real feasibility objectives and sustainability as their goal.

4. Vocational not academic

Africa has schooling and Universities but a huge hole in the middle – vocational colleges. Yet what Africa desperately needs is not more Universities but more vocational learning. Economic growth will come from practical skills agenda not building expensive educational institutions. Why copy a University system that doesn’t work in the developed world. It’s expensive, elitist and graduate unemployment is rising. Only 6% of Africans will even have a chance of a  University education, what about the other 94%. Let’s focus on them, as they are Africa’s future.

5. Learning not schooling

The Millennium goals focus too much on simple schooling, yet all of us eventually leave school. What happens then is important. Employability and job creation is vital, not the Anglo-Saxon liberal-arts, colonial agenda. It’s not schools that matter but what is taught and learnt in schools. Improve the quality of teacher training (take it out of Universities) and focus on what is required locally.

6. Leapfrog don’t follow

Africa has the highest growth in mobile penetration in the world. Everywhere, people have cheap phones and use them to transfer money, communicate and get on with their lives. Mobile griwt has been the big success story and new, cheap smartphones will accelerate internat access via mobile. They’re cheap and compelling because they’re useful. Africa needs to do the same with learning, leapfrog with good infrastructure projects that use the BYOD devices. Fascinating things are happening on leapfrog infrastructure –  a geostationary satellite above the Congo with pan-African reach – one way internet access but a start. Then there’s Facebook’s solar powered drones using infra-red to provide internet access, easy to launch and maintain. Finally Google’s balloons.

7. Focus on the free

They say that information wants to be free, well education now wants to be free. We have Wikipedia, Khan Academy, OER, MOOCs (see articles on MOOCs) and so on. Africa would be mad not to take this stuff, as it’s free. MOOCs are now being produced by the likes of EPFL, Kepler and the African Virtual University in relevant languages on relevant topics – and they’re free. With MOOCs Africa has bandwidth problems, even on campuses, so well designed offline solutions are needed. We also need to integrate MOOCs into local curricula, blend involving local faculty, collaborate at the teacher level. Academic regulations need to be amended and MOOCs bundled.

Conclusion
Africa is rising and needs, not the failed models of the developed world but new models that are more suited to the massive demand that already exists for education and training. This is not more universities but more vocational learning. The great opportunity here, is to use the great gifts of the internet, that are already there, for free. 

This conference is a small miracle, but it's in Africa and well attended by Africans from across the continent. Once again, Rebecca Stromeyer and her fantastic team pull together a fantastic conference that focuses wholly on Africa and is not scared to ask hard questions and seek out new and radical answers.  
PS
News from China may be the greatest boost Africa has seen in a long time. A major Chinese Solar Tech CEO says, "We are not far away from the cost of (solar energy) production for conventional energy. We are sure that by 2016 - or at the latest 2017 - the cost of solar PV will be the same as coal-fired generation in China". If true, at that moment each ail drive economic and educational growth in Africa.

Think tanks - 10 rules of techn-ology

As we drove down the small country roads to Bovingdon, we heard them first, then started to glimpse them through the trees, rearing up and down on rough tracks. Suddenly, one was coming straight at us on the road, then two more. The area was crawling with tanks and armoured vehicles. Every time we saw one we shouted – tank, tank! What a simple, solid word.

Tank techn-ology

Our destination was The Tank Museum. And this is the fine statue at the entrance. I like technology, usually the smaller stuff, computers, iPads, mobile phones etc. What I wanted to know was whether my work in researching new technology, or techn-ology (the science of technology) applied to something as big, bad and brutish as tank technology.

So far, my 10 rules of techn-ology are:

1. Technology changes RULES
2. Technology has ALLURE
3. Technology coalesces PREVIOUS TECHNOLOGIES
4. Technology is HARDWARE+SOFTWARE
5. Technology is about SCALE
6. Technology is UNPREDICTABLE
7. Technology locks in PRACTICE
8. Technology can be USURPED
9. Technology DIES
10. Technology produces NOSTALGIA

Technology changes RULES

A tank is a moving, armoured vehicle with a gun. So who first invented the tank? Sure the Carthaginians, Greeks and Romans had armoured elephants but it was Leonardo da Vinci who first imagined the true tank, a circular, sloped cone with wheels that allowed it to move in any direction with a turret and gun. But it was the British at the start of the First World War who developed the first metal, tracked tank to breach German trenches.

These huge, trapezoid beasts were to change the face of warfare for the next 70 years. The first tank battles were messy. More men died of carbon monoxide poisoning than enemy fire. They were noisy, smelly, hot, difficult to manoeuvre and easily captured. You can crawl inside one in the Museum and see that it really is a metal tank – like being inside a metal box with sharp angles, rivets and a huge, uncovered engine, taking up most of the space. Just a small hole to see and hand rods to steer. Eight men crews were needed for gear changing, steering and gun handling, with male tanks (big side guns) and female tanks (machine guns). The Germans were truly shaken by this new weapon and all sides in future wars were to adopt the technology as an offensive weapon. The tank played a cardinal role in the Second World War and the threat in the Cold war was tanks rolling across Europe. In the Israeli Arab wars they played a significant role as they did in the Gulf wars.

Technology has ALLURE

Tanks have a special allure, both admired and feared. You need only recall the screaming, screeching, banshee sound of the German tanks near the end of the film Saving Private Ryan, to appreciate the feeling of fear and awe they inspire. Later British tanks had bus engines, designed to make a huge amount of noise, just to terrify the enemy. You can tell by their potent names; Panzers, Tigers and Leopards, that these were predators. As you walk round the Tank Museum they seem dark, impenetrable and lethal – and that’s exactly what they are.

Technology coalesces PREVIOUS TECHNOLOGIES

The tank is really several core technologies in one, with lots of add ons. The core technologies are the engine, gearbox, wheels, tracks, armour and gun(s). All of these had been developed in other contexts. Even now these are the essential, simple ingredients. But it’s all about payoffs. You can have great, heavy armour but you’ll need a reliable and powerful, fuel hungry engine. You can have great robust tracks but you’ll need to drive along country roads. You can have the best tank in a battle but if it’s up against many more, cheaper to manufacture tanks, you’re a gonner. So it’s all about comprimises. 

The accessories are wonders in themselves, those clusters of little tubes that eject smoke bombs to form a circle of smoke around the tank to hide behind. Challengers simply add dye to their fuel and use the exhaust smoke to do the same job. The slatted armour that catches RPGs in mid-air so their fuse doesn’t hit the armour. You literally pull them off like thorns and disarm them. What the tank became was an all-purpose fighting machine with troops, guns, defence, navigation and surveillance equipment all rolled into the one vehicle, taking the best of everything and packing it into a mobile, killing machine.

Technology is HARDWARE+SOFTWARE

Smart design was the key to tank development. As the Germans widened their trenches, the tanks got longer. Some major innovations included simply sloping the armour, this meant that bullets and shells had to chew through more armour to get through and the slope deflected the impact. Russian tanks develop long snorkels so they could cross European rivers during the Cold War. Concrete crossing points were even found in the West after the wall came down!

The business end of the tank is the gun barrel. This is what gives it menace. Accurate to within feet at five and half kilometres they destroy their target every time. In a rather sad story, the ex-tank driver told us that only one Challenger had ever been taken out in battle, in the Gulf War. A crew had gone off grid for a spot of sunbathing. Another Challenger had spotted it and at 5 kilometers had gone all the way up the chain of command. They fired and killed the entire crew, who would have known nothing about it.

The barrels are clad, with sights and cameras down their length as even the sun shining on one side will heat one side up and introduce aim errors. Depleted Uranium tipped shells work just through kinetic energy. They punch a small hole on their target tank, literally liquidise the crew and produce pressure so great that it pushes the liquidised contents back out of the hole. But it’s now the software that sets targets, identifies threats, controls fire and navigates the tank that is important as its hardware. It’s the calculations made of cost of manufacture, fuel consumption and numbers that matter.

Technology is about SCALE

A T34 sits there with a roughly cast turret and no frills. They gave their tank crews padded helmets, rather than padding the tanks, saving time and money and although crudely built, they made 84,000 of them with handles for troops to hang on to. The Easter front became a war of attrition with the Russians simply outnumbering the Germans in tanks and men. They also used small Mongolian tanks crew. The rest is history.

Technology is UNPREDICTABLE

Technology is often unpredictable and the tank was to develop into a remarkable flexible workhorse, with grappling hooks to pull back tangles of barbed wire and create a gap for troops and horses, mine clearer with a huge rack of ball and chains up front for triggering mines, train tanks mounted on rails, amphibious tanks, anti-aircraft tanks and so on. There were even fire breathing tanks for burning snipers and troops alive. If their crews were caught they were executed by the Germans on the spot. They were used for many more purposes than were ever imagined when they were first built.

Technology locks in PRACTICE

A serious consequence in the military is fossilised practice, where hardware contracts often stretch out to as long as 30 years, with an inbuilt resistance to change, especially when the weapons become embedded and locked into regimental structures.

Technology can be USURPED

If we see a tank on our TV screens today, it’s likely to be the state using it on its own citizens. We saw it with Gadhafi and now see it with Assad. In these circumstances it’s a blunt and brutal instrument, used to shell urban areas, with many civilian casualties.

Technology DIES

Like most technology, it has largely had its day. There are no British tanks in Afghanistan. Why they’re too heavy to fly in and we’d never be able to fly them out as the air is too thin and the last thing we want is to leave them behind! Besides, in modern urban warfare, tanks are cumbersome. They’re too big to get down streets, vulnerable to ambush and wreck the roads and drainage systems. The last major tank on tank battle was in 1967 – the Yom Kippur War. The British Army has 300 tanks and they’re scrapping 250 of them. In the end tanks lock personnel into relatively easy to identify targets so tanks are giving way to smaller, more flexible, all-purpose, armed vehicles.

Technology produces NOSTALGIA

One need only watch the visitors at The Tank Museum and the newly built tank track stadium for summer events to see that many are fond of tanks and see in them a symbol of power and victory, especially for the British, who invented the tank. Even now they look and sound like dinosaurs, beasts from the past.

Conclusion

Tanks appeared at the start of the 20^th century and are now being mothballed. They were the land weapon of choice for nearly 70 years. In the end newer technologies, especially accurate missiles fired from the air, and now from drones, threaten their very existence. So we’re back at our first rule, technology changes the rules, again and again and again. Resistance is futile – even if you have a tank!