The way that Sean puts it here, I would have to agree with him, and not Brad (sorry Brad).
I think Sean is saying that technology is not the same as capitalism, or not the same as whichever mode of production under which it comes into existence. And that's right. There is nothing intrinsically capitalist about the computer or the laser, it just happens that they were developed in the era we call capitalism, when human relations were ordered according to the profit motive.
As to the cause, it is not really right to say that capitalism _causes_ the inventions to happen. Seeing science and technology as just special instances of labour under capitalism it would be more true to say that labour is the real cause, and capital only its subordination to private interests. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- How is it that computer and the laser, both developed out of the military during the Cold War I think, not intrinsically capitalist? Yes, science and technology are instances of labour under capitalism and everything is produced by labour, not capitalists. If capitalism is so all powerful at subordinating labor, which isn't even a category without capitalism making it one, how can this 'labour' produce scientific and technological innovations outside of it? Furthermore, Iike I said, how do you parcel out the historical influences of capitalism on past innovations which are the basis of further innovations? Even if the Rev. Bell invented the reaper by tinkering around and not directly because his means of self reproduction were under pressure to innovate, how do you incorporate the prior developments in iron, the machine press and other things necessary for him to make his innovation, which did occur because of capitalist pressures? I will grant that specific instances of scientific and technological innovation happen without direct pressure to compete caused by capitalism, or that they aren't 'the sole preserve of that mode of production'. This though does not undermine my claim that capitalism did play a role in its development and the argument that these innovations would/could have occurred without capitalism just so much wishing that it hadn't happened as it did. Yeah, maybe they could have occurred otherwise, but they didn't. That's the point.
Sean claims that to recognize the positive attributes of capitalism is boosterism or bourgeois. But that is not the case at all. Bourgeois economists don't claim that capitalism is responsible for the bad things, just the good. I, and Marx by the way, think capitalism is responsible for some good and mostly bad. I am kinda with Ted on this, I think: capitalism is the necessary objectification of work into labour which then must be brought under social direction (socialized) for there to be human emancipation. Without this objectification of labour we don't get the complex division of labor and innovations necessary to overcome scarcity and give humans the full range of options to meet their potentials.
Brad