On a smoke filled evening, on the anniversary of the gunpowder plot.

Here I sit, in London, on the night of Guy Fawkes and all I can hear from outside is the percussive reports of rockets and other explosive fireworks. I've been hearing these explosions now every night for about the last month ... beginning with the Indian holiday of Diwali. If I step outside my house, I can see there is a thick man made fog settling in, which smells sulphurous in nature.

Some of you may ask, what this has to do with technology ... my response is quite a bit actually. The firework is a modern day cousin of its earliest incarnation which the Chinese used for religious festivals and other occasions. The first fireworks are thought to have been created in the second century BC. The adaptation of this technology was to take many years and give birth to firearms, artillery, military rockets and other high explosives.

Much of the technology we own today has grown out of our desire to wage war, protect ourselves, revere the spiritual and also to entertain ourselves. As crowds of us, collectively ooh and ahh at the spectacle that fireworks present, we also carry around with us the results of the many developments the military have created for waging war more efficiently; cellphones, optics, cameras, hi-tech fibres and much, much, more ... enjoy the lightshow.