The response toScience, Liberty and Peace was at best lukewarm. Reviewers ranged from the mildly critical to the openly hostile, generally finding fault with one or more of satyagraha, decentralisation or the strategy of relying on scientists to bring about change.
In this book I develop ideas about technology and nonviolence that can be interpreted as a development and application of Huxley’s vision. A recurring theme is that those technologies that allow people to control their own lives are the ones best suited to enabling a community to use nonviolent methods to resist aggression or oppression.
1. INTRODUCTION
Let’s begin with two bold propositions. First, methods of social action without violence can be extremely powerful — indeed so powerful as to be a possible alternative to military defence. Second, technology, which is now massively oriented to military purposes, can be reoriented to support nonviolent action.
These two propositions, if followed through, lead to two striking conclusions. First, nonviolent struggle, which is normally seen as primarily a social and psychological process, has vital technological dimensions. Second, reorienting technology to serve nonviolent struggle would involve a wholesale transformation of research directions, technological infrastructure and social decision making.
This is a quick overview of the task ahead in this book. The rest of this introduction provides a more measured approach to key ideas. It is useful to begin with weapons of war.
War has always involved suffering and death. Centuries ago weapons included swords, bows and arrows, catapults and battering rams, enough for plenty of killing. Today’s weapons include rifles, tanks, giant battleships, aircraft for saturation bombing, precision-guided missiles, landmines, and biological, chemical and nuclear weapons.