According to Guns, Germs and Steel, necessity is not the mother of invention. In fact the opposite is true: inventions appear when the needs of the inventors are already met.
Jared Diamond notwithstanding, WW2 led directly or indirectly to:
1. The atomic bomb
2. Jet aircraft
3. The digital computer
4. Modern rocketry
And the Cold War gave rise to
1. The internet
2. The space program
3. The interstate highway system
These are the kinds of big swings that Thiel is talking about and that's just off the top of my head. You can go through previous wars as well. Wouldn't be surprised if WW1 was a real shot in the arm for aviation, for example.
Probably the biggest peacetime innovation since the end of the Cold War has been the sequencing of the human genome. But arguably that was also a computer science innovation, as it revolved around better assembly algorithms and required no test pilots, clinical trials, or atomic bomb detonations.
The first flying jet aircraft was before WW2, the Heinkel He178 on August 27, 1939.
The first freeway network was in Germany before WW2.
Before the internet gained popularity, about everyone with more than one computer tried to connect them together. There were quite a proliferation of networks before the internet subsumed them all (after all, even the term "inter" net was derived from connecting disparate networks together, not computers). There was BIX, FidoNet, Compuserve, Prodigy, MCINet, just to name a few off the top of my head. Some students at Caltech in the 70's built their own ad-hoc network when I was there.
While the other networks have all been forgotten today, to suggest that without the ARPAnet networks wouldn't have happened is without foundation.
Wow, what's with WWII and the Cold War lately? Everyone is trying to find silver linings in them. So I'll just whip out my previous comment about the broken window fallacy: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3255480
The whole war = innovation thing never held much water for me.
First of all, there is no way to know what would have happened if there was no war. Some of those things might have been invented anyway. Maybe other more important things would have been invented.
Also, if you look at non-war years they too are full of innovation. The period just before WW1 brought us the light bulb, the telegraph, the phone, skyscrapers, the type writer, etc. etc. I mean, it was over a slightly longer period of time, but I don't think it would be outrageous to argue that the rate of innovation was just as high as during WW2.
Work on jet engine began long before WW2 (and it failed to accelerate during WW2).
So did the work on nuclear fission (if it wasn't for top scientists incl. Einstein convincing US President to fund it, there wouldn't be Manhattan Project at all. German scientists fortunately failed to persuade Nazis even though they were much closer to nuclear device.)
ramanujan|14 years ago
Probably the biggest peacetime innovation since the end of the Cold War has been the sequencing of the human genome. But arguably that was also a computer science innovation, as it revolved around better assembly algorithms and required no test pilots, clinical trials, or atomic bomb detonations.
WalterBright|14 years ago
The first freeway network was in Germany before WW2.
Before the internet gained popularity, about everyone with more than one computer tried to connect them together. There were quite a proliferation of networks before the internet subsumed them all (after all, even the term "inter" net was derived from connecting disparate networks together, not computers). There was BIX, FidoNet, Compuserve, Prodigy, MCINet, just to name a few off the top of my head. Some students at Caltech in the 70's built their own ad-hoc network when I was there.
While the other networks have all been forgotten today, to suggest that without the ARPAnet networks wouldn't have happened is without foundation.
gwern|14 years ago
cop359|14 years ago
First of all, there is no way to know what would have happened if there was no war. Some of those things might have been invented anyway. Maybe other more important things would have been invented.
Also, if you look at non-war years they too are full of innovation. The period just before WW1 brought us the light bulb, the telegraph, the phone, skyscrapers, the type writer, etc. etc. I mean, it was over a slightly longer period of time, but I don't think it would be outrageous to argue that the rate of innovation was just as high as during WW2.
unknown|14 years ago
[deleted]
jleyank|14 years ago
borism|14 years ago
Work on jet engine began long before WW2 (and it failed to accelerate during WW2).
So did the work on nuclear fission (if it wasn't for top scientists incl. Einstein convincing US President to fund it, there wouldn't be Manhattan Project at all. German scientists fortunately failed to persuade Nazis even though they were much closer to nuclear device.)