Technology - Wonderment of War

While things military are in my thoughts and I wrestle with my conscience over the waste of so many lives in so many worthless conflicts since the beginning of time I am brought to the conclusion that without these conflicts our lives today would be so different. Different because the system would be so different but also different because so much technical innovation was driven by the need to be better than the enemy. Our technological world is zooming along at pace and we are living through an electronic revolution driven now, not by war but by wonderment, but the foundations of this progress were until fuelled by military funding. Edwin Starr and later Bruce Springsteen sang “War, what is it good for? Absolutely nothin’!” and while my conscience finds it an easy statement to agree with I know in my heart of hearts I have war to thank for both my freedom and the technology that makes life so much more interesting today. Maybe one day technology will eliminate the need for war or maybe it will eliminate the cause of war by destroying humanity, but either way the genie is out of the bottle and either we control the genie or the genie controls us. The future might be bright or it could be darker than we could ever imagine but either way it is going to be fuelled by technological innovation, let us hope that the advances we see are fuelled by wonderment and not by war, a lust for life and not a lust for revenge.