How Technology Promotes World Peace

Hugh Pickens writes "Ayesha & Parag Khanna write in the Atlantic that there are many important differences between the U.S.-China relationship of today and the U.S.-Soviet relationship before the outbreak of the Cold War. One is that the U.S. and China are deeply intertwined through geo-economic interdependence, and the rapid and global diffusion of technology is accelerating these changes. 'As the global economy has become more integrated, states have greater interest in cooperating and less interest in conflict, which can lead to a kind of mutually assured economic destruction,' write the Khanna. 'If military power is inherently competitive — the stronger your army and the weaker your neighbor's, the more powerful you become — then economic power is more cooperative. After all, much of America's power today is economic, but that power would decrease if China's economy collapses.' This economic inter-dependence, the theory goes, promotes peace, but technological power is also cooperative in this way, perhaps even more so. For example, medical research crosses borders, as do the pharmaceuticals or treatments that research can produce. China can increase its power by developing better solar panels — perhaps in part by building on foreign technologies — then turn around and sell them to other high-energy-consuming states, making us all better off. Like economics, technology doesn't just increase cooperation, it is the cooperation. 'The increasingly integrated global system is shaping the states within it, much as individual powers shape the system. The question is thus not who controls technology, but the way in which we develop, guide, and control it collectively.'"

Comments

Technologies are only delaying the real thing

[Taco Cowboy]

I am not a luddite, but I still gotta say this ...

The technologies that we have today have given us a lot of good things

It has made our lives "better", in the sense that a lot of diseases that previously can kill us, nowadays are not that lethal anymore

But, the consequence is that the world human population has exploded

20 years ago, there were less than 5 Billion people

Now, 7 Billion people, and, as we speak, the figure keeps going up and up

Our planet simply can't support it

Either we human completely depleted the planet and we die off - and in the process a lot of other plants and animals wiped off as well,

Or ...

There will be another full scale global war, that ends up cutting down the human population to more manageable size

In other words, the "world peace" that we have today is but only an illusion - our technologies are delaying the what will have to come, ultimately