Do wars drive technological advancement?
Do wars drive technological advancement? According to the late Edwin Starr, war is good for absolutely nothing. But how much of the technology we depend upon today began as a kind of military technology? Is it possible that if we were a peaceful species we wouldn’t have developed technologies like microwave ovens or the Internet? Wars put an enormous demand upon a nation’s resources. Those resources include everything from materials to military personnel. It’s expensive to wage war. And war places a burden upon a nation’s citizens. As soldiers march off to battle, the people left behind must work even harder to keep the nation’s infrastructure from collapsing. But wars can also have beneficial effects on economic and technological development. In general, wars tend to accelerate technological development to adapt tools for the purpose of solving specific military needs. Later, these military tools may evolve into non-military devices. A relatively recent example of this is radar. While
