“We should fight with better governance and better intelligence. We have to empower communities to better defend themselves, not with weapons but with organization.”

A quote from Jelani Popal, working on development for the government of Afghanistan, in reference to overcoming the Taliban there. From the New York Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/24/world/asia/24afghan.html?pagewanted=1&hp

Mr. Popal has found a succinct way to sum up the implications of the reading and thinking I've been doing on the subject of politics for the past few years. Not just on the small scale - as when fighting a particular group in a particular place - but in the global, historical quest to have our own children and nation overcome those who would stand in our way: we have to be more efficient and productive, not more destructive.

Now the question is: what is the role of science and technology in this struggle to organize, seeing how it was born from the pursuit of ever larger and more effective killing machines?