Sure, what i said still applies though, war creates demand for new technology.
It does, but what you actually were saying was that it was needed to do this. Very big difference between arguing that it can provide an impetus and that it provides a better impetus. As I've backed up, technology has progressed impressively during one of the periods where Western society LEAST expects to come under threat from an equal power. Plus war has some pretty horrific costs to it. It leaves scars for generations, animosity that breeds more animosity. I think the argument you put is one put by people who have never lost family or a home to war. Tell someone whose boyfriend died in Iraq that "hey, this is helping to drive technological innovation". Put that argument to people visiting the memorials at Auschwitz or Hiroshima.
I'll just repeat what I said before. We didn't create modern mobile phone technology because we couldn't allow a screen resolution gap with the Ruskies. Competition does just fine without war. We're a competitive species. The difficulty is reigning it in before it turns into genocide or launching ICBMs at each other, not on finding ways to stimulate it. Have you noticed a LACK of competitiveness in the leaders of modern society?
Development of collosus at bletchly park to break the german lorenz cypher during world war 2.
Development of h.265 compression to make movies better quality. Considerably more complex mathematics involved.
The development of the tank
It's a big metal box on tracks. How about the development of the Ferrari California T. No military applications that I'm aware of but it's some pretty fine looking technology.
and, Especially the Manhattan project, which also gave us nuclear electricity.
Oh, this is a great example. Except that nuclear power was sent down a vastly inferior side road because the US government wanted reactors that spat out lots of Plutonium for their weapons programs. If it weren't for that we'd have far safer reactor designs today and far less nuclear waste lying around that we had to bury. Nuclear power and nuclear weapons are very different technologies. The Manhattan project didn't lead to nuclear power, it diverted resource away from that and then kept it on the wrong track (leading to things like Three Mile Island and Chernobyl) because safer reactor designs that were in consideration at the time didn't fit with the nuclear weapons programs needs.
If it wasn't for the need of plutonium and later tritium for fission and fussion weapons we wouldn't of had the first nuclear power stations,
Completely ass-backwards. The idea of nuclear power predates the atom bomb and given its tremendous advantages would certainly have been pursued. WAS being pursued. All the need for plutonium did was divert it down a less profitable route and create a horror of nuclear power amongst the hippies that we're still trying to overcome.
thats just the tip of the iceburg. I'm not saying these things wouldn't of happened but that they were developed much quicker compared to peicetime because of the huge amount of demand from governments and thus funding they recieved.
That's not demonstrated at all. At least one of your examples was held back by military interest and for anything else I can match you piece for piece. You've ignored the fact that the last thirty years have seen the fastest pace of technological development this species has ever experienced and just fallen straight back to argument by assertion and citing a few examples that can be matched just as easily with counter-examples all day long.
You repeated a bit of received wisdom which you'd never questioned. You have been challenged on it. You are not considering whether or not you were right in your original statement but instead have gone off in search immediately of facts to support it. People find the facts they're looking for - always have. But you can't actually show that war is the best drive for technology as fastest pace of development has actually taken place outside of it. You've completely disregarded the question of whether an accelerated pace (which you have yet to prove) is worth the deaths of millions and the long-term animosity between peoples that war breeds. Please, consider if your argument is ACTUALLY right, rather than instinctively defend it because you never analysed it before.
