Introduction
One can safely say that dynamite is one of the significant and decisive technological inventions between the early 19th and 20th centuries. Dynamite is a “blasting explosive, patented in 1867 by the Swedish physicist Alfred Nobel” (The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica, n.d., para. 1). Nobel developed it as a solution to the extreme instability and sensitivity of nitroglycerin (The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica, n.d.). These two shortcomings of nitroglycerin posed a great danger and life-threatening risk to the construction workers and miners who worked with it in the 19th century. Although the attitude of the scientist and his intentions in developing dynamite were pacifistic, this new technology had both a huge positive influence and a tremendous negative impact on the societal, political, and economic spheres of various countries, and this paper will discuss this topic.
Dynamite and Politics
The duality of the impact of the invention of dynamite is present in each of the three major civilizational areas mentioned above. It was a technical novelty that both techno-optimists and techno-pessimists of those times have been right about. The first are people who praise innovation and technological progress, and the second are those who are skeptical or even hostile about these things (Winston & Edelbach, 2013). The positive political outcome of dynamite came after the negative one. It is the law of war established by humankind after it saw the horrors of war in the form of grenades, bombs, and mines that used stabilized nitroglycerin. For example, international military law prohibits cluster bombs and land mines, saving hundreds of thousands of civilian and military lives and preventing them from being severely injured (Pike, 2022). The negative impact of dynamite is the increased ferocity of warfare and the larger scale of destruction that came along with new weapons such as long-range artillery and air bombs that Nobel indirectly helped to invent.
Dynamite and Society
When discussing society, the effect of dynamite technology on it is also two-sided. Safe nitroglycerin has allowed people to accelerate the process of industrialization in many countries significantly. People managed to expand health care, education, and public transport infrastructures in a short period. However, dynamite also radicalized various social groups and their political struggle and urban confrontation methods. According to Brown (2018), “When combined with mass-produced gas or water pipes, dynamite gave desperate men an easily concealed and transported means to disrupt the system they so resented” (para. 6). Despite technological advances, being a city dweller has become even more dangerous since Nobel made his major scientific discovery.
Dynamite and Economy
The impact of dynamite in the economic sphere is much more one-sided than in the previous two civilizational areas discussed. The stabilized nitroglycerin helped business people and the government to extract land resources faster, open more new and deeper mines, and build complex domestic and international trade routes (Kravitz, n.d.). The only negative consequence here is the reduced need for living labor for such enterprises, which economically harms local communities.
Conclusion
As one can see, the usefulness of dynamite as a technology is a very controversial topic. I believe such tradeoffs were worth it as the cumulative positive effect on society is far greater than the negative one. Moreover, Nobel’s intentions were humanistic and even pacifistic in creating this new explosive, and it is not his fault that people used his invention for much less humane purposes.
References
Brown, K. (2018). Bombs are part of American political history. The Conversation. Web.
Kravitz, F. (n.d.). Dynamite and the ethics of its many uses. American Chemical Society. Web.
Pike, T. (2022). Banned weapons of war: What’s regulated in modern warfare?Pew Pew Tactical. Web.
The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica. (n.d.). Dynamite. Encyclopedia Britannica. Web.
Winston, M., & Edelbach, R. (2013). Society, ethics, and technology (5th ed.). Cengage Learning.