Introduction
The Sciences and their systematic methods gained new recognition in the face of WWII. Previously, research in military was very restricted and inefficient, but with Bush's precedent set during the Nazi Onslaught, the scenario changed. The Marriage of Science and Military was completed during the Second World War, and the momentum generated by this event has been carried through till this day - albeit in modified forms. The Visions of Science and War from the 1930's, which were primarily guided by Vanevar Bush's vision and his outline of post-war research directives, have remained very much the same today while undergoing some modifications due to the changed world scenario. My objective is to discuss these changes and similarities with some examples.
The Race for Information
One of the things, military technologists in US concentrated during and after world war 2, was to look at how best to store and make easy the access of the piles of information and data generated by scientific research and military offices all across the US. Bush suggested some analog techniques to overcome these problems but they were largely overshadowed by the development of Digitisation by Shannon and the invention of the internet i.e. Networking. In light of these revolutionary events, which Bush failed to foresee, one might be led to expect that the problems of information access, communication, storage, cross-linking and referencing, that is, the problem of information processing is largely solved - Nothing could be farther from the truth.
How can this be possible? While different reasons come to mind, some have had wider and bigger impact than others. One of them is the evolution of Global Collaborations between military agencies in light of terrorist threats and of scientists in general due to the explosion in scientific research post-war worldwide. We all know that Terrorists employ methods where they primarily use hidden warfare - striking when moments are ripe and disappearing without trace before retaliation is possible. This has made the power to process information and derive new information with high speed and accuracy even more valuable in order to assess these threats as soon as they appear and counter them. Moreover, Representation and visualization of information has become important in the context of scientific and industrial research where lot of raw data have become easily accessible due to improvement in methods of measurements. Thus, it can be seen that the race to obtain informational advantage is still at large although for somewhat different reasons than initially intended during 1930’s.
Bulletproof Ballistics
A major focus of scientists involved in military research during WWII was to develop countermeasures to tackle enemy aircrafts and missiles. This can be seen from the celebrated example of Wiener and the feedback based Anti-Aircraft technology. The systems which wiener helped to build could accurately predict the dynamics of manned aircrafts using feedback and control mechanisms. It was a revolutionary breakthrough for the Allies, aiding them in stopping the blitz bombings. This revolutionary idea has become deeply embedded in Ballistic systems of Today and has come far beyond its rudimentary beginnings – both in its application to tackling ballistic weapons as well as in the counter strategies to overcome the enemy’s defenses for the same. The main reason why these weapons have still survived as a part of a nation’s military offensive even though every nation is scrambling to develop counter measures against them is due to development in various different fields of sciences in particular fundamental advances in chemistry, biology and in control and feedback theory which have given new methods to inflict precise and devastating harm through these missiles and hence raising the stakes to make error-free systems for both defense and offense. The motivation for these developments can be very plainly seen in the M.A.D(Mutually Assured Destruction) policy adopted by most super states today. These objectives are not very different from the aims of military research to develop countermeasures for aircrafts during the War, even though the Nuclear Bomb and the concept of M.A.D were not fully formed back then.
In Conclusion
Thus, we can see from these examples that even though scientific body of Knowledge has changed and exploded post-WWII, the combined visions of Military with Science have not changed much. Though the enemy to world peace has changed and the policies of States have undergone changes with regard to war and even though, the methods of science have changed, the military research needed to tackle enemy threats are largely guided by similar aims as the 1930’s military research.
Bibliography:
1) On Bush's As we may think, Notes by Elyon Caspi, AJ Shankar, Jingtao Wang.
2)The Ontology of the Enemy: Norbert Wiener and the Cybernetic Vision, Peter Galison
3)Wikipedia page on WWII and Science policy in the US
Barath
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