[Zardoz]

Originally Posted by jerhanner

But aren't these things all related? I don't seriously worry about CERN's work, but it's still part of the uncontrolled military-industrial complex. They're the same people who made the steam engine, the internal combustion engine, the nuclear reactor, and goddess only knows what else.
In my circles, at least, CERN is just another "good intention" of which the road to hell is paved.

But one can argue that ever technological innvation of the 20th/21st century was military technology first.

[DNA-1842]

Originally Posted by jerhanner

But aren't these things all related? I don't seriously worry about CERN's work, but it's still part of the uncontrolled military-industrial complex. They're the same people who made the steam engine, the internal combustion engine, the nuclear reactor, and goddess only knows what else.
In my circles, at least, CERN is just another "good intention" of which the road to hell is paved.

CERN is not a military organisation. It is a group of dreamers with money.

[MissionTrek08]

I too was going to ask how CERN is part of the military-industrial complex, since it's a physics lab? It doesn't directly produce anything for practical use in weapons or industry... it's subatomic particle research primarily aimed at theories of astrophysics, to my knowledge.

[kevin]

But it did help create the internet!

[TheTrekkie]

We won't die.

What CERN is doing happens a lot of times in our atmosphere and until now no black hole has been created !!!!

They just make the collision under measurable laboratory conditions.


I think the whole theory about dying came from a German chaostheorists who had the opinion micro-black-holes could grow exponential instead of losing their energy instantly and collapsing seconds after their creation as Hawking said it. I go for Hawking, coz this theorist even isn't a physicist, just a guy who believes he found a new interpretation of Einstein's theory of relativity.
So in fact a micro-black-hole could be created, with a very small probability, and if it is created the black-hole (not we) will die instantly.

And CERN is 100% not military. It's funded by several European states, I think around 20.

[Zardoz]

Originally Posted by kevin

But it did help create the internet!

Based on an American military design.

[TheTrekkie]

Originally Posted by Zardoz

Based on an American military design.

CERN created the WorldWideWeb, not the internet.


Unfortunatelly a lot of technologies have roots in military organisation. And a lot of technologies that hadn't roots in the military were at least (ab)used for military goals afterwards.
Why? Coz our countries still spend too much money for their military, the USA more than European states nowadays, but European states in the past, too.
And unfortunatelly war makes technology advancement more important than peace. During peace the competition is solely econmic, but during war your whole survival is depending on having a better technology. So war and military sometimes can become a catalyst for technological advancement. Reminds me anyhow to the Shadow philosophy in Babylon 5.

However civilian scientific organisation are a lot more efficient than military, because the whole money you spend into them goes solely into science and nothing else.

[kevin]

Most tech starts off from military budget R&D or scientists having little side projects. I don't worry whether a military or scientific budget or the US or the USSR are responsible, by the time it filters down to consumer technology all that has become irrelevant really.