News Summary

• The idea of a technology being "inevitable" is a curious one.
• Nobody knows ahead of time what technologies are going to be developed or adopted by society.
• The value of cannon as a military technology was significantly greater in Europe, where political fragmentation led to fortifications being built with tall, thin walls designed to resist escalade.
• A cannon can breach a curtain wall much faster than a counterweight trebuchet, and more efficiently too.
• Unless all of these conditions hold, the adoption of a given technology can be fairly held to be contingent and not inevitable.