Would technological development without the World Wars and the Cold War have been slower or faster? Specifically nuclear weapons, commercial airplane flights, the Internet, iPads, iPhones, et cetera. On the one hand, without these events, you'd have less pressure for rapid technological innovation, but on the other hand, the world would also benefit from having much more surviving Europeans (especially Eastern Slavs) and Ashkenazi Jews due to the lack of Holocaust and the ex-USSR avoiding its extreme demographic devastation during the 20th century in this TL. So, how would these factors have compared with one another?
Technological development without the World Wars and the Cold War: Slower or faster?
- Thread starter WolfBear
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sillygoose
Well-known member
Faster. Broken window fallacy.
When specifically do you see us having the Internet in this TL?
Zyobot
Just a time-traveling robot stranded on Earth.
Pretty much my impression, too.
To quote myself in replying to a similar point a while back:
sillygoose
Well-known member
1970s? Too many variables to say for sure. I mean the FET transistor was invented in the 1920s conceptually, but the manufacturing techniques and materials to make it viable weren't invented until the 1940s-50s.
Guess it's hard to rate. The Broken Window Fallacy counterargument is a good one. I guess it's hard to conceptualize considering the converse idea is more commonly held, of War and Conflict spurring investment in such things.
You'd think it'd be easier to find some substantive arguments one way or the other, especially since we've had long periods of "peace" between the Great Powers so to speak like between 1815-1914 and 1945 until... well hopefully it'll keep going. But since technological development doesn't increase in a straight line on the graph, I guess it'd be a hard metric to judge.
Plus the narrative of history tends to focus on Wars as being pretty good dividing lines between 'eras' of history or whatever. Like arguing how World War One is a break into the "Modern Age" or something by some people. Or that while Industrialization was already happening in the prior century, it became more widespread during the Napoleonic Wars.
I guess one way of looking at it (and just spitballing here) is how American supposedly had a burst of creative energy and prosperity in the wake of the Great War since I recall people stating that the reason American literature and philosophy kinda rose a lot in the 1920's or whatever was because a lot of the potential great writers and artists and whatnot from Europe ended up dead in World War One. But I don't think that was as big an impact with scientists and engineering though (maybe since they'd be more valuable away from the frontlines doing science and engineering stuff).
Maybe there's a way to tell what was lost in conflict by seeing how many research papers or certain degrees or class sizes or patents etc were issued by American Universities compared with European institutions during or after the World Wars... or comparing peacetime immediately prior and following those conflicts with the rates in wartime. I dunno.
You'd think it'd be easier to find some substantive arguments one way or the other, especially since we've had long periods of "peace" between the Great Powers so to speak like between 1815-1914 and 1945 until... well hopefully it'll keep going. But since technological development doesn't increase in a straight line on the graph, I guess it'd be a hard metric to judge.
Plus the narrative of history tends to focus on Wars as being pretty good dividing lines between 'eras' of history or whatever. Like arguing how World War One is a break into the "Modern Age" or something by some people. Or that while Industrialization was already happening in the prior century, it became more widespread during the Napoleonic Wars.
I guess one way of looking at it (and just spitballing here) is how American supposedly had a burst of creative energy and prosperity in the wake of the Great War since I recall people stating that the reason American literature and philosophy kinda rose a lot in the 1920's or whatever was because a lot of the potential great writers and artists and whatnot from Europe ended up dead in World War One. But I don't think that was as big an impact with scientists and engineering though (maybe since they'd be more valuable away from the frontlines doing science and engineering stuff).
Maybe there's a way to tell what was lost in conflict by seeing how many research papers or certain degrees or class sizes or patents etc were issued by American Universities compared with European institutions during or after the World Wars... or comparing peacetime immediately prior and following those conflicts with the rates in wartime. I dunno.
bintananth
behind a desk
I'm leaning towards slower.
A fair amount of WWII tech advancement was "we need this now ... bugs be damned" instead of "we have the time to get this right before we start mass producing it".
A fair amount of WWII tech advancement was "we need this now ... bugs be damned" instead of "we have the time to get this right before we start mass producing it".
Difficult to tell. The large numbers of deaths and huge resources consumed by the two world wars probably acted as a delaying event overall. Might be that the cold war went the other way.
The one query I can think on this would be whether the social change prompted by the wars would have increased technical change enough to make up for this? So much of the old aristocratic power structure was swept away by WWI especially. Mind you without WWI we probably wouldn't have had the great depression, or at least not when it occurred, since there wouldn't be a single point of failure [in this case the US] to make things so bad and long lasting.