BOMBS, BOOBS & BURGERS

Hi everybody, welcome to my new blog, the official online presence of my upcoming book, Bombs, Boobs & Burgers: How the Technologies of War, Sex and Food Transformed Our World. I'll be using this blog to provide a behind-the-scenes look at how the book is coming together so I'll be posting interviews, excerpts, photos, stories and whatever else I come across in the course of research. I'll also be posting links to all the war, sex and food technology news out there, so if any of those topics floats your boat, be sure to check back here regularly.

So what is the book about? Well, the subtitle pretty much tells it all. A surprising amount of every-day stuff comes from those three industries: war, sex and food. The amount of technology that comes directly from military research - from jet engines to digital computers to the internet - is simply astounding. The sex industry, meanwhile, generally hasn't directly invented the stuff it uses but its role as an early adopter of technologies has been no less influential. Without porn, we may never have had video cameras, VCRs or video streaming. As for the food processing and fast food industries, when you consider that even bananas have banana flavour injected into them to make them taste more like bananas... well, needless to say, there's a ton of technology going into food that we don't even notice.

What's the link between the three? There are perceptions out there that war, porn and food processing are bad. The inevitable result of war is death, and there's little disagreement that that's not a good thing. When it comes to pornography, some argue that it chips away at society's morals. Food processing and fast food, meanwhile, often get blamed for poor health and rising obesity levels. While all of this may or not be true, the three industries do also contribute to a bright side, which is the bettering of our world through their technological offshoots. Bombs, Boobs & Burgers is all about weighing those derivatives against the downsides and, hopefully, coming to some sort of conclusion (and nope, I haven't done so yet!). I hope you check out the book when it's released in Spring 2010!