Refuge from or assertion of banditry or other express or implied threat of physical assault is a powerful force underlying the development of much of technology

Refuge from or assertion of banditry or other express or implied threat of physical assault is a powerful force underlying the development of much of technology, not only architecture. In architecture, some of the more interesting I have seen are Guangdong's Diaolou (碉樓) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diaolou https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diaolou - but of course we have castles, bridges, etc. IIRC John Young, architect and Cryptome maintainer, made some interesting studies in to public spaces as "the architecture of control". When you look at mass transit stations, for instance, there are so many control elements which we consider normal - lines, signage, threats of prosecution, physical barriers, choke points, hidden connections, video, etc. - but are actually explicit acknowledgement of risk, danger, threat and control. But something as simple as staple foods (deriving from settled agriculture and thus central control), or the entire field of logistics, operations research and indeed computing can also be linked directly to force projection. Truly, we are base creatures. The product of the human brain has escaped the control of human hands. This is the comedy of science. - Karel Čapek (1921), inventor of the term 'robot'