09-25-2021, 03:51 PM | #11 | |
Join Date: Oct 2006
Location: Chagrin Falls
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Re: Hyperdepression and technological regression
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Having to locally source intermediate assemblies, basic parts or raw materials is not the same thing as losing TL. Will the above scenario change availability, prices, lead times, quality, &c. ? Very probably, but there are century old technologies for mass producing bolt and bearings and chain and sprockets and tires. Loss of that ability is what I think of when we talk about TL regression. YMMV
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09-25-2021, 04:11 PM | #12 | |
Join Date: Jan 2006
Location: Central Europe
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Re: Hyperdepression and technological regression
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09-25-2021, 04:28 PM | #13 | |
Join Date: Jan 2006
Location: Central Europe
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Re: Hyperdepression and technological regression
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- people with specialized skills - long-distance exchange - concentrations of people Depressions are not great at those things (they can cause the cities to clear out, but if the economy recovers in 10 or 20 years the skills are all there; they can cut trade, but poor people are highly motivated to trade). So depressions can be contributing factors, but they are rarely the first thing survivors mention. Its possible that the beginning of the end of Roman Britain was the removal of salaried garrisons along the Rhine. Britain was losing its cities but it had big villas in the south-east which were probably funded by selling grain to the Rhine garrison and which probably helped keep the cities going. But if it were not for civil wars, and invasions, and catastrophically bad government, and a collapse of long-distance trade, Britain could have recovered.
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"It is easier to banish a habit of thought than a piece of knowledge." H. Beam Piper This forum got less aggravating when I started using the ignore feature |
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09-25-2021, 04:40 PM | #14 | |
Join Date: Jun 2005
Location: Lawrence, KS
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Re: Hyperdepression and technological regression
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But, yes, his role in the story was that of a villainous mastermind, and that was how the viewpoint characters thought of him most of the way through. Then they changed sides, in a reversal much like that at the end of Watchmen. The whole novel so perfectly fits the pulp formula that I'm sure Rand knew exactly what she was doing. She even gave us the villain's long speech explaining his master plan!
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09-25-2021, 04:47 PM | #15 | |
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: traveller
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Re: Hyperdepression and technological regression
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The lesson of the Roman concrete isn't that the three factories collapsed. It's that the techniques and formulas for making concrete were embodied in just those three factories and their personnel. I think you'd have to posit a "for want of a nail" situation where the tools or techniques needed to re-establish a key industry were lost somehow along the way. By way of analogy: you have the plans for a Saturn V, but you can't actually produce one because some of the parts were hand-made by craftsmen and those skills are no longer practiced in the era of CAD/CAM. |
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09-25-2021, 08:17 PM | #16 | |
Join Date: Dec 2020
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Re: Hyperdepression and technological regression
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A lot of important things got lost in the history by accident, even if the knowledge was considered a important state secret. A example is the greek fire and the technique to use the liquid as a weapon. Nowadays we are even more vulnerable, because most advenced tech we have is depending on a working society. But this knowledge take years to be learned and is stored in mostly digital form. A lot of people know how a old fashioned light source worked and enough people can build the tools for it. But how many people know the exact way a LED works and can build one. Not to mention computer chips or similar tech? I would say the good old TL from post WWII can we keep, it needs a lower population base and fewer resources, but our actual near TL 9? Not a chance if something like the black death or a geomagnetic storm happens. Yes poor people and refugees are able to cover a lot of ground, but remember nowadays this people use modern means of transport, and a road system unbeaten in history. If you use your own feet or horses, it would take month to walk from east to westcoast, especially if the people have to work on there way for food. Imho a lot of people drastically underestimate the impact of broken trade and long range travel. Once the disruption is longer than a generation the people who have the knowledge are too old to transfer the konwledge fully to younger ones, and a lot of stuff has to be shown and couldnīt be learned from books or I pads. We have a lot of black smith, but how many really can make a sword? Same goes for nearly everything else. |
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09-25-2021, 09:02 PM | #17 |
Join Date: Jan 2006
Location: Central Europe
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Re: Hyperdepression and technological regression
S.A. Fisher has a few posts and Pyramid articles on the 'bush technology' which you get in places like Central Africa or Afghanistan.
As a complex society or empire collapses, you often don't get what came before the state, because that world is dead and there is no time to rebuild it and it does not necessarily meet their needs anyways. You get people repurposing the scraps from that complex society to meet their needs with the resources available to them, and figuring out ways to make the things they need. So post-Roman technology was not pre-Roman technology, it was some new things, some things which had been superceded a thousand years before the Romans came, and some bits of Roman technology. The post early in this thread about how a collapse of our civilization would almost certainly keep the germ theory and firearms manufacture and simple electric devices is a good example.
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"It is easier to banish a habit of thought than a piece of knowledge." H. Beam Piper This forum got less aggravating when I started using the ignore feature Last edited by Polydamas; 09-25-2021 at 09:05 PM. |
09-25-2021, 09:21 PM | #18 | ||||
Join Date: Jul 2008
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Re: Hyperdepression and technological regression
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Microchips, well, that's a place where to a large extent knowing how isn't the problem. The facilities involved are big and rare, and the chemical industry and tooling production that support them are also big. It would not be too hard in a more destructive scenario to wind up with no fabs capable of producing those. Rebuilding on a smaller scale (and likely a significantly lower resolution as well) might be feasible to retain an earlier TL8 computational capability. Quote:
If you've got the infrastructure for those, what are you expecting to lose? Quote:
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09-25-2021, 09:48 PM | #19 |
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Wellington, NZ
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Re: Hyperdepression and technological regression
You mean aside from the various hobbyists who make fully functional swords using steels ranging from historically correct through to ultra-modern alloys, and using techniques ranging from 'primitive' and largely historically correct to ultra-modern?
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09-25-2021, 10:46 PM | #20 | |
Join Date: Jul 2008
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Re: Hyperdepression and technological regression
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Anything discovered once can be discovered again. Nothing surprising about that.
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I don't know any 3e, so there is no chance that I am talking about 3e rules by accident. |
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