Tolkien, Technology, and... War - The Barrow-Downs Discussion Forum

***Mister Underhill*** · 05-12-2004, 10:19 AM

Strangely enough, modern technology and the advent of instantaneous global communication has bred a new spin on modern warfare, one in which propaganda and psychological objectives are as valuable or even more valuable than conventional tactical and strategic objectives. Operations are conducted not to achieve any particular tactical objective, but only for their P.R. value.

I daresay that, considering his dislike even of the telephone, Tolkien would have recoiled from computers and the internet.

Technology gets a pasting in "On Fairy-Stories" as well, with special scorn reserved for the sheer aesthetic ugliness of mass-production.

He also comments on the transience of technological objects. As science races ahead with new discoveries and new gadgets, today's cutting edge tech is, tomorrow, "pitiably obsolete and shabby".

He seems to have been much more interested in permanent, primary, fundamental things like trees, and the ocean, and lightning. "How real," he says with much irony, "how startlingly alive is a factory chimney compared with an elm-tree: poor obsolete thing, insubstantial dream of an escapist!"

In this I sympathize, though as Sauce notes we are all, to an extent, the products of our age. I'd hate to give up my XBOX.

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05-12-2004, 10:19 AM	#14
*Mister Underhill* Dread Horseman Join Date: Sep 2000 Location: Behind you! Posts: 2,744	Strangely enough, modern technology and the advent of instantaneous global communication has bred a new spin on modern warfare, one in which propaganda and psychological objectives are as valuable or even more valuable than conventional tactical and strategic objectives. Operations are conducted not to achieve any particular tactical objective, but only for their P.R. value. I daresay that, considering his dislike even of the telephone, Tolkien would have recoiled from computers and the internet. Technology gets a pasting in "On Fairy-Stories" as well, with special scorn reserved for the sheer aesthetic ugliness of mass-production. He also comments on the transience of technological objects. As science races ahead with new discoveries and new gadgets, today's cutting edge tech is, tomorrow, "pitiably obsolete and shabby". He seems to have been much more interested in permanent, primary, fundamental things like trees, and the ocean, and lightning. "How real," he says with much irony, "how startlingly alive is a factory chimney compared with an elm-tree: poor obsolete thing, insubstantial dream of an escapist!" In this I sympathize, though as Sauce notes we are all, to an extent, the products of our age. I'd hate to give up my XBOX.