....is the mother of invention.

[Albie]

A few days ago, I saw a programme on TV that dealt with the inventions and ideas that have shaped the 20th century (James May's 20th Century - was the programme). The opening gambit of this particular episode I watched simply said:

Some people believe that necessity is the mother of invention. But they're wrong - it's War

So, what is the mother of invention? Necessity or War?

For sure, a lot of what we have now came to be from a war. In reality though, anything that was invented during times of conflict was invented out of necessity. But had it not been for that war, it may never of happened.

However, war also takes an existing invention and improves on it. Aviation, for one, took massive strides in advancement because of two world wars - but the invention initially was from peacetime. Computing again was a peacetime invention, but it wasn't until the second world war that it became an invaluable tool (if you know the history of the computer from Charles Babbage to the Turing machine, you would see a massive gulf in its development - it took a war to improve on an existing machine).

It's, predominantly, machine technology that has taken enormous strides when we are trying to kill each other, but occasionally a handy little gadget/thing is given to us when we're not. The internet was developed as an education tool in a time of peace. And that little idea has allowed me to post this drivel.

What do you think is the mother of invention? War or necessity?

 

[LooseCannon]

What comes first, war or necessity?  That should answer your question.

We create things so we can do better killing each other.  It makes a lot of sense to me.  Only recently has that trend started to change...and even so...

 

[Mmm...Donuts]

It depends sometimes for me actually, like for example, guns were invented for war as a necessity to kill each other. Sometimes they come together, thats a grim reality. Some inventions like steam engines may have been used as necessity for industrial stuff, but eventually as a weapon of war. Who knows, microwave technology may become heat rays in the future, just another entrance to killing people.

 

[Onhell]

Laziness is the mother of invention. To make things easier seems to be the goal of most things, the less we do the better, the easier things are the better, I don't call that necessity because one doen't really NEED a microwave or walkman... they just make things easier.

 

[Mmm...Donuts]

That's situational sometimes though, like we really needed planes and ships, we'd die of fatigue from crossing oceans unless our ancestors had some bright idea of making whales as transports. Maybe like convenience and stuff, but I do agree with you Onhell, that some inventions were made out of laziness. Convenience can go with laziness or not though. 

 

[Forostar]

Some inventions can harm people and are developed especially for war, or are improved by it.
Far more inventions have nothing to do with violence or war purposes.

Let's not generalize, but rather zoom in at various processes/objects/inventions and then we'll see where we get.

 

[IronDuke]

I find it interesting that some of the greatest discoveries (I won't call them "inventions" per se) were made when the discoverer was looking for something completely unrelated (known as serendipity):
Quinine
Newton's laws
North & South America (By Vikings AND by Spaniards)
Discovery or Uranus
Helium
Penicillin
Vaccination
TNT
Teflon

 

[Albie]

Laziness is the mother of invention.

There is a whole host of stuff we don't need that has been said to have been invented out of necessity (or war), but we really could not do without them today. True microwaves are not needed (laziness - or the beginnings of the instant results culture we are experiencing today), but the walkman is not something that is made for laziness. This is more of an invention that could be done - and so it was.

But technology in times of war does move fast but does it always help civilians. Supersonic flight, for example, does not help me or you in our day to day lives as we can travel by plane (if needed) rather successfully without it - Concorde was simply a luxury. A point was also made in this programme that did state that some ideas were put forward to stop being killed - and so we had camouflage.


As a footnote, the presenter of the said programme took a back seat in a Eurofighter which apparently can get to over 6 miles high from a standing start in 2.5 minutes. Technology eh! This video highlights his experience. Talk about boys with toys.