'The excess of militarism which has plagued... society for the last century and a half is largely the result of a motivation which our society consistently underestimates. That motivation is very simply the desire to play with toys. The phrase "play with toys" is used here in the very broad sense of manipulating devices which are both novel and high-performance, devices which push the "state of the art". The consequences of this seemingly harmless propensity have been extraordinarily significant and rather unfortunate. We have rationalized and built large military organizations primarily for the purpose of providing those technophiles among us with the opportunity to play with the neatest and newest toys. The military is in reality simply a gigantic communal toy-owning organization. That is its fascination and its true raison d'être'

The toy theory of western history, M.E.D. Koenig, Essays of an Information Scientist, Vol:3, p.367-371, 1977-78.