Barbed Wire

Few other technologies did more to usher in the hallmarks of the modern era: the harnessing of nature, brutal mass warfare, political conquest and repression, and genocide. Developed in the U.S.A. as a handy way of keeping cattle 'in' and native Americans 'out', barbed wire also played a leading role in the expansion of Australia. It realized its destiny in the trench warfare of 1914-18 and in the camp archipelagos of the world, from the Boer War to Auschwitz, from the Gulag to Guantanamo.