5 ms·
Technology in general often overrides and obsoletes existing things.
by Razengan 5y ago
Technology in general often overrides and obsoletes existing things.
- dotancohen 5y agoAnd war has historically been the impetus for much technological investment.
- Razengan 5y agoFood and Sex have been the prime motivators for all most everything, and Murder when someone prevents you from either of those. Only relatively recently has Entertainment become an end in itself when the other three are satiated. :)
- i67vw3 5y agoWar has brought the human civiaztion where it is today. Without war, we would be in caves.
- oblio 5y agoThis feels like a bit of a historical trope. It doesn't even make economic sense. During a war you're not going to invest as much into R&D (especially basic research), industrial production, etc, because you know, you have to... build the things that kill the other people. To me war feels more like the thing that publicizes the things we've discovered since the last war, because the way (pop) history is presented, everything is about: - wars (because they're "interesting", finding out about the slow accretion of inventions that lead to the mass production of iron is less cool) - great people (99% great men)
- dotancohen 5y agoYou might want to read about the history of jet engines, the Manhattan project, the V-2 and related (R-series and Redstone) rockets, radar, GPS, and the internet. Just for some recent examples.
- oblio 5y agoI know about all those. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30904417 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30904417 What about peace time inventions? Which ones outpace the others? Are we SURE that war time inventions outpace peace time inventions? Do we have any studies that prove or disprove what you claim? Otherwise it's just a trope.
- dotancohen 5y agoPlease do post the numbers that you find, I am interested as well.
- pfdietz 5y agoWhile it is not the only driver, a major early driver for integrated circuits was the need for reliability in military electronics. I saw an estimate that at one point 1/4 of all carrier based aircraft were out of service at any time due to avionics malfunctions. And the first major user of ICs, the Minuteman II guidance computer, would not have been possible without them. The Minuteman I computer was smaller and used discrete components, and could only be made sufficiently reliable by enormous testing and retesting at multiple system levels. Doing the same for the larger MM II computer would have been entirely too expensive. ICs increased reliability by making interconnections far more reliable (being deposited on the chip together so failure is correlated.) Of course they are also smaller and use less power, but reliability was more of a brick wall issue.
- hef19898 5y agoR&D soars during war, at least for war relevant technologies. Rockets, jet engines, aviation, synthetic fuel, chemistry, smokeless gunpowder, steam powered ships, nuclear fission... You name it. And that is in addition to all the stuff needed to actually build those things. If you think industrial production isn't invested in during war you should fresh up on any modern war since WW1.