In addition to their heuristic value, these concepts also have pedagogical utility. They sometimes have a special relevance or poignancy when applied to war, but they say more about the nature of technology than they do about the nature of war. Below I put forward four propositions about military technology, but the principles at work could be applied as easily in any realm of technological endeavor. Military machines and instruments can nonetheless be understood using the same concepts and categories that scholars apply to technology in general. Whether it does good or ill depends not on the technology itself but on what humans choose to do with it. Technology in essence is a process of manipulating the material world for human purposes. Melvin Kranzberg, a co-founder of the Society for the History of Technology and the founding editor of its journal, Technology and Culture, was fond of observing that technology is neither good nor bad, nor is it neutral. But should that be the case, it will run counter to the sorry record of prior human civilization, when each new instrument of war contributed to the carnage without altering the human nature Thucydides believed to be at the heart of war. More than six decades into the nuclear age, there is growing evidence that the hydrogen bomb may prove to be the long-sought war-stopper. They believed that they could banish the scourge of war, or at least restrain its excesses, if they could only invent the ultimate weapon, the instrument so horrible that no one would dare use it. But countless inventors and innovators, from Alfred Nobel to Robert Boyle, thought of weapons positively. Its foundational figure in Western civilization is the Greek Hephaestus (whose counterpart was the Roman “Vulcan”), the only god to have been lame and misshapen. Hyde roaming the back alleys of civilization for opportunities to work his worst on society. Military technology often seems to be the dark side of innovation, the Mr.
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