Technological escalation: Encyclopedia II - Technological escalation - Motives

Technological escalation - Motives

Motives for technological escalation go far deeper than simple desire to triumph in the "necessary evil" of conflict between states. For one thing the massive military spending of the 20th century led to what many called "war profiteering" — supply of war materiel to nation-states for profit. Although some, like the Krupps of Germany, lost a great deal, others, like the Messerschmitts or Daimlers, did very well — the latter remains a prominent name in automotives today.

Another convergence is the role of media, especially radio and television, not only in propaganda but also directly in warfare: signals warfare in particular has become a major field, and led to the modern specialized study of information warfare and of civilian persuasion technology. It is often observed that this has shaped the modern discourse on advertising, and the invention of technologies (such as video games) for entertainment that are also of use in military training. So another motive of technological escalation is the provision of new toys, and training devices, that can feed a military-industrial complex.

Importantly, a key motive in all competition in all mammal species, especially among males, is simple showing off. Such abstracted arms races as the space race, for instance, show that there need not be any direct gain or material motive involved to cause vast sums of skill and energy to go into goals that are, ultimately, symbolic.

However, some claim that the space race had by far more spinoff value in the commercial sector per dollar than any money ever invested directly in the military in the 20th century — often estimated as much as seven times greater. In part this is due to the increased demand for extreme environment clothing and life support technologies required for investigating hostile environments for science and for oil exploration.

These motives (commercial spinoffs, showing off by wasting resources, control of opinion of an elite class of technologists users and scientists whom one will need in warfare, and simple profit) combine in most cases to render technological escalation all but inevitable once a conflict has begun between two technological and industrial civilizations. For these and other reasons, Marxian economics focuses on the inevitability of wars under capitalism.

By contrast, theorists of green economics tend to subscribe to the view from feminism that it is the "showing off" and the need to waste resources to prove one's competence and sexiness, that dominate the logic of technological escalation of warfare.

One interpretation is that capitalism permits inferior beings qualified only for deception to lay access to media with which they can lay claim to the achievements of the superior beings who actually create the technology and do the science. Another interpretation is that the ability to grab attention being in fact the point of the whole exercise, superiority must itself be measured by ability to control the media and claim credit for things done by others — a form of fraud-based kleptocracy. Thus the issue is a deeper one of sexual cognition — females pay attention to males in proportion to their ability to waste great amounts of resources, and males compete with other males to gain power to do so.

Proponents claim it would be hard to imagine a theory that is more strongly rooted in biology than this, and more difficult to convincingly and fully refute, and that the theory is not much criticized because there is no way to gain status from criticizing something so clearly and obviously true.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Motives", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki