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Stories of technological inventions throughout the ages are replete with allegations of good intentions gone awry. As an example, both Postman (1992) and Mumford (1986) cite the case of the invention of the mechanical clock by Benedictine monks who desired to mark the seven canonical hours for devotions. For Postman, the instrument conceived for the service of God became a tool of capitalists in the service of Mammon (p. 15). For Mumford, "Time-keeping passed into time-serving and time-accounting and time-rationing. As this took place, Eternity ceased gradually to serve as the measure and focus of human actions" (p. 326). Another example of technology that became something far beyond what its inventor imagined was the Gutenberg press. Gutenberg, a devout Catholic, invented the press which Luther later described as "God's highest act of grace, whereby the business of the gospel is driven forward" (Postman, 1992 p. 15). Because of the printing press, every man became his own priest, and pope. "In the struggle between unity and diversity of religious belief, the press favored the latter, and we can assume that this possibility never occurred to Gutenberg" (p. 15). Rybczynski (1983) cited the origin of bronze cannons using foundries that had perfected the art of bronze casting for a very different purpose-the manufacture of church bells.
As a final example of medieval European inventions that changed the world, Postman (1992) offered the telescope. While the printing press "attacked the epistemology of the oral tradition", the telescope "attacked the fundamental propositions of Judeo-Christian theology" (p. 29). "Whereas men had traditionally looked to Heaven to find authority, purpose, and meaning", Copernicus, Kepler, and Galileo "looked not to Heaven but to the heavens" (p. 34). Postman's point in all of this is not that these unintended consequences of technological development should make us question the importance and propriety of these discoveries, but rather that technological developments do in fact have unintended consequences.
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