Everyone knows the story about modern computing having its origins in the Second World War, specifically problems related to gunnery. But rereading Wiener's Cybernetics reveals that the most immediate and explicit catalyst was raw speed:
At the beginning of the war, the German prestige in aviation and the defensive position of England turned the attention of many scientists to the improvement of anti-aircraft artillery. Even before the war, it had become clear that the speed of the airplane had rendered obsolete all classical methods for the direction of fire, and that it was necessary to build into the control apparatus all the computations necessary.
This makes me want to go back to Virillio, and also to James Gleick's Faster (which I've had on my shelf for a while); and Henry Adams, "A Law of Acceleration."