7 Well-Meaning Inventions That Turned Evil

They had all the best intentions...

The road to hell is paved with good intentions" - St. Bernard of Clairvaux It goes without saying that technology itself cannot be evil. Until we get to the point of creating an AI with all the intelligence of human beings but none of the empathy, then we're safe from such an occurrence. Of course, there are some inventions - nuclear weapons, torture equipment, guns - that are only justified by the perplexing idea that they're there to protect us 'in the bigger picture', but the initial ideas behind even such heinous creations often started off with the best intentions. While the truism that each invention can be used for both good and evil isn't fascinating in itself, what's fascinating is the journey of an invention from something that should save humanity to something that destroys it, from a dye to a lethal explosive, or from a publicly available service to a terrorist battle-plan. The fact is that we don't know the full potential - for good or ill - of an invention until it gets exposed to the crazy, corrupting influence of people. That being the case, should we stop coming up with new ways of trying to improve life on earth just to negate the inevitability that things will go wrong? I think not, but you might beg to differ after you read this list of seemingly well-meaning inventions that have caused damage to humanity.
In this post: 
Adolf Hitler
 
First Posted On: 
Contributor
Contributor

Gamer, Researcher of strange things. I'm a writer-editor hybrid whose writings on video games, technology and movies can be found across the internet. I've even ventured into the realm of current affairs on occasion but, unable to face reality, have retreated into expatiating on things on screens instead.