Reliability as an Art – the strongest weapon in the world
Saturday, January 24th, 2009The strongest weapon in the world
2006 Song Hojun | songhojun@gmail.com
U.S. attacked Iraq to find “weapons of mass destruction” with “weapons of mass destruction” and North Korea menaced neighbor countries and world using nuclear weapons. Still many countries firmly believe that their securities can only be protected by having stronger weapons and they invest a lot of money into killing machines. And we begin to wonder what it is all about to compete to develop instruments to threaten and kill people. One day, an idea of making strongest weapons to terminate the endless weapon competition around the world came into my head. Since violence begets violence, the strongest weapon in the world should not be in a form of violence. So I came up with an idea of building a machine that is unbreakable even by nuclear bomb and can store data of people’s wishes for peace and love. The strongest weapon in the world propagates people’s voice when certain events happen. This will be named as beautiful explosion. And those who spend their lives to develop machines to kill people and those who start war to make money using weapons will feel something if they see the strongest weapon in the world. And if these machines are built throughout the world and share voices of peace, this could act as the ultimate deterrent. And it could be called “weapons of mass happiness” as counterpart to WMD. In fact, building WMH-weapons of mass happiness is almost impossible. Even finding a material that can resist nuclear explosion is extremely difficult. But study and discussion to make the strongest weapon in the world are enough to give chances to reflect on what they did for those who build WMD and its advocates.
In this article, first, ideal model of WMH is presented and how it can be implemented is discussed. Then, prototype of WMH is introduced along with importance of building a prototype to bring social issue. Last, issues for building a real WMH are discussed.
WMH is implemented as below:
Unbreakable exterior material- to be the strongest, it should endure current strongest weapon- a nuclear bomb’s explosion. And it should be waterproof to be installed outside.
Rugged interior material- interior materials like computer systems inside the WMH should persist to high radiation exposure and many harsh environmental factors like humidity, temperature changes, vibration, and etc.
Storing beautiful messages- to store beautiful messages around the world through internet, WMH is built as a server. And to store messages on site, it has interface like a touch pad to recognize people’s writing and a camera to automatically capture beautiful moments that happens before WMH.
Beautiful explosion- when certain events happen, WMH is triggered to explode. Examples of triggering events are a war, a terror, a massacre, and etc. To propagate voices of peace and love, it needs to equip with communication devices. For normal time, it communicates with other using internet, but for war times, when all the internet infrastructures are destroyed, it uses satellite to transmit messages around the world.
Self-generating- To be power independent, WMH uses solar panels to generate power. And to operate in a harsh environment for a long time, battery regulation circuit that’s almost as sophisticated as satellite system should be adopted. Solar panels are mounted inside the exterior material to be unbreakable. So a transparent super-strong exterior material is needed if solar panels are to be used.
As are presented above, building a WMH is an extremely challenging work. But the purpose of building a WMH is not to make money or anything practical, so a different approach can be taken to achieve WMH’s original goal. Anthony Dune and Fiona Raby define design noir as using and designing electro devices as social commentaries from their book, “Design Noir”. [1] In their book, many unpractical designs that are prototyped are introduced. And they claim that designs can generate many narratives in various social context when they are actually exists. The impact a design can have is greater when it is virtually exists than it is in conceptual drawing or writing, they said. For example, they built Faraday cage, where people get inside the cage to protect them from electo-magnetic waves that wander around the air. They asked many people to use them and received reports from them, and found out even non-operating but well-conceptualized prototype can generate narratives as much as final product could have.
So the prototype of WMH is implemented to initiate the debate on weapon competition. As exterior material, duralumin is selected. A sphere, 850mm diameter, 20mm thickness, is casted to look strong. For interior material, industrial class computer with vibration isolator in duralumin case is used. To reduce the heat generated from power supply, fanless power supply is used. And to find out people’s movement and capture their moments, a fast speed camera and 2 IR lamps are used. For on-site interaction a receipt printer is mounted inside to print our messages for peace when it detects people’s movements. Along with building a prototype, writing a solid scenario is very important to deliver overall WMH’s goal. When existing prototype and the well written scenario are combined, WMH can generate many stories with the help of spectators’ imagination.
the strongest weapon in the world in Studio hhjjj, 2006
To use WMH as deterrent to war and weapon competition, a prototype is made. But to influence more, real WMH should be built. Building it by oneself is too much work and so open source project can be a solution for WMH building. So far most of the open source projects are software based. But for WMH, hardest parts are hardware based. So unlike software open source project, WMH cannot be built on-line. Still gathering information from various hobbyists, experts, artists, and anyone who’s interested in it is valuable. And to compensate on-line discussion, a conference can be held, where people get together, present their researches, and literally build WMH together.
In the article, the strongest weapon in the world also known as weapon of mass happiness is presented. It is unbreakable, self-generating machine that is capable of storing people’s wishes for peace and love and transmitting them throughout the world. WMH is expected to bring up issues on endless weapon competition and killing. Although, it’s very hard to build a real WMH, a prototype and a good scenario can achieve similar goal. And when open source project for WMH is successful, a rough budget for real WMH can be projected to apply for a funding. Build something unpractical and use it as social commentary might be regarded as total insanity in capitalism. But we should know peace cannot be bought at any time.
Reference
[1], Design Noir: The Secret Life of Electronic Objects, Anthony Dune & Fiona Raby, Birkhäuser Basel; 1 edition (September 1, 2001)
