Technologies of violence

The modern age has seen a complete transformation in the relationship between technology and violence, in particular the military application of unprecedented creative endeavour and productive capacity to the development of new ways to kill and maim. Within these processes, a key theme emerges – the increasing depersonalisation of violence. This can take many forms. The first is scale – so-called weapons of mass destruction are designed to yield casualty rates up to the tens of thousands, within which individual victims are almost entirely subsumed. The second is distance – aerial bombing or guided missiles, for instance, ensure that the perpetrators of violent acts are so removed from those they are attacking as to strip away any intimacy from their actions. The third is automation – the use of weapons such as landmines and unmanned drones raises difficult questions about agency, conflict ethics, and moral responsibility. The fourth is asymmetry – whether in colonial wars of independence or cases of serious civil unrest, technology has often served to exacerbate major imbalances between belligerents. And the final aspect is trivialisation – in an era in which cinema, television and video games all deploy violence and warfare for the purpose of entertainment (and to drive up sales), recognition of the true nature of violent acts can often be lost. This chapter will explore the ways in which technology has made violence more remote, more abstract, more palatable, and arguably more ubiquitous in the modern age.