Are you saying that war increases technological growth? That's crappy pop-history that's largely been discredited. Competition invites advancement, blowing up your competitors does nothing.
That is not quite entirely true, war -- especially long-term -- results in huge funds being funnelled towards things that can blow up the other guy, which can then move into more peaceful realms. Not to mention the requirements for research safety and grants are often quite different.
Without WWII, would we have operational jets in the early 40s? What about rockets? All of rocket science from the late 40s and early 50s came from WWII germany. Likewise for fission and fusion research, how much longer would it have taken without Los Alamos?
> Competition invites advancement, blowing up your competitors does nothing.
That's crappy pop-history that's largely been discredited. Inventors generally don't need motivation, only funds (of time, of money, of equipment, of relations). And the reason for those funds and where they come from is the lowest of worry, as long as they are provided. Competition is irrelevant to invention and advancement.
If you want to debate, please sign up for http://arguex.com/ I'm not going to do it here.
Also - I signed up for the service - I love the idea, but if you expect me to sign up to Facebook just to start using your service - then forget it.
War itself may not increase technological growth. But preparations for war certainly do. And please show me another competition that has yielded lets say 50% of technological advances that various arms races have?
Sadly when human develops new kind of tech and is looking for money to get it widespread - the first and deciding question is: "Can it be used as a weapon?"
Think of the nuclear bunker gap!
However I did say that I would like to see an example of a phenomena that produced at least 50% of technological advances that warfare has.
Low cost genome sequencing is all nice and dandy - but thus far worthless. I'm not saying it ain't got potential, but thus far it hasn't really impacted us in any meaningful way. And I'd be willing to bet that any future impacts on this field are going to be financed through military complex.
Even the renewable energy sources will probably come from military and not from enlightened corporations.
Don't get me wrong - I'm not trying to pass judgment here. It's just an observation.
Citation needed.
I can certainly say that without WW II and then the Cold War, Silicon Valley would not have looked anything like it does today. Read everything in http://steveblank.com/category/secret-history-of-silicon-val... and watch the video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTC_RxWN_xo for evidence for that assertion.
The Nazi doctors did quite a lot for the advance of the medical field simply because of all the horrible experiments they could do.
Unlike the Nazi experiments these don't seem as well known in the west, though they've had a potentially greater effect. I say potentially because most of the doctors were pardoned (the ones that weren't captured by the Russians) and several rose to prominence in Japanese medical circles. The results of Unit 731 are mostly classified, and have been used to jumpstart biological weapons programs in both the USSR and the US (at least one Unit 731 doctor moved to the US to work on bioweapons).