11-24-2021, 09:13 AM | #1 |
Join Date: Oct 2007
|
Do Collapses help Technology?
Bronze Age Collapse
TL 1 to TL2 followed Fall of Rome TL 2 to TL 3 Black Death TL 3 to TL 4 Coincidence or pattern? |
11-24-2021, 09:48 AM | #2 |
Join Date: Aug 2007
|
Re: Do Collapses help Technology?
Illusion? "Collapses" are at most local and the Black Death isn't usually considered a collapse.
__________________
Fred Brackin |
11-24-2021, 09:52 AM | #3 | |
Join Date: Jun 2006
|
Re: Do Collapses help Technology?
Quote:
On the other hand, something serious enough to label a "collapse" necessarily means a change in the way your economy works, and that opens space for things that previously weren't worth doing to become important. And any kind of change in stuff used is a candidate for being labeled a TL transition. Is the new technology "better"? Well it works better *now*, regardless of whether it would have in the old economy. That makes it progress, right?
__________________
-- MA Lloyd |
|
11-24-2021, 10:17 AM | #4 | |
Join Date: Dec 2007
|
Re: Do Collapses help Technology?
Quote:
Last edited by David Johnston2; 11-24-2021 at 10:27 AM. |
|
11-24-2021, 10:21 AM | #5 | |
Join Date: Sep 2011
|
Re: Do Collapses help Technology?
Quote:
<Collapse> TL4 to TL5 <Collapse> TL 5 to TL6 <Collapse> TL6 to TL7 <Collapse> TL 7 to TL8 you don't have a pattern (and we should by your suggestion see a collapse responsible for TL0 to TL1). The cause for the Bronze Age Collapse is disputed. Going by the effects of your three postulated collapses, the pattern is more: the collapse of international trade and diplomacy isolates and disrupts the expected order of things for the societies of the known world. This gives leeway for new methods to be in effect when those societies reconnect. Not for the new methods to be present of necessity, but simply for it to be possible that new methods exist. Absent the pattern, I'd say coincidence, maybe even happenstance. |
|
11-24-2021, 10:36 AM | #6 | |
Hero of Democracy
Join Date: Mar 2012
Location: far from the ocean
|
Re: Do Collapses help Technology?
Quote:
I mean, I can point to political systems that go down around the time of most of these changes, from the Soviet Union to Swedish empire. A lot of these are knocked down by technological changes, rather than bringing them about. I think that's a much more interesting case to look at, and you can argue that's also the case with both the bronze age collapse and Rome. But there are people who will argue that none of these things are a collapse. Not even the bronze age collapse.
__________________
Be helpful, not pedantic Worlds Beyond Earth -- my blog Check out the PbP forum! If you don't see a game you'd like, ask me about making one! |
|
11-24-2021, 10:44 AM | #7 | |
Join Date: Jun 2006
|
Re: Do Collapses help Technology?
Quote:
The relationship is more like "things changing allows for other things to change" which is a lot less interesting a thesis than either "collapse brings progress" or "progress brings collapse".
__________________
-- MA Lloyd |
|
11-24-2021, 11:46 AM | #8 |
Join Date: Jun 2006
Location: On the road again...
|
Re: Do Collapses help Technology?
While it can be argued that the Great Depression of the 1930s and WWII of the early 1940s was a "collapse" that led into TL7, it pales next to the Bronze Age Collapse. And there was no real Collapse between 5 and 6, nor between 7 and 8. And the shift from TL4 to 5 was increased reliability rather than a disruption (the Golden Age of Piracy and the English Civil War weren't widespread enough to cause a Collapse).
__________________
"Life ... is an Oreo cookie." - J'onn J'onzz, 1991 "But mom, I don't wanna go back in the dungeon!" The GURPS Marvel Universe Reboot Project A-G, H-R, and S-Z, and its not-a-wiki-really web adaptation. Ranoc, a Muskets-and-Magery Renaissance Fantasy Setting |
11-24-2021, 11:49 AM | #9 |
Join Date: Jun 2013
|
Re: Do Collapses help Technology?
This reminds me of a quote from the webcomic Genocide Man, which starts here (although I should note that page and the next have serious spoilers). I'll note this is the speech of an AI that has gone a bit cuckoo (as all AI's are wont to do in the setting).
"The human race. It's a paradox. The most adaptable species ever - so resilient, they crave suffering to test their ability. Catastrophe makes them stronger. The invention of warfare brought metallurgy. The Crusades proliferated mathematics. The Cold War spawned the Internet. The Plague Wars created the Guayaquil Upgrade*. Paradox. Paradox. There's only one way to help them... and it's a paradox. If you have gifts to give them... if you want to see them thrive... if you truly, deeply, love human beings... Then kill as many of them as you can." *From the setting's timeline, although there it's called the Genocide Wars, and is considered to have started in 2037 with genegineered humans being used as weapons. The Guayaquil Upgrade was one of the "plagues" during this time period (when there were worldwide, engineered, targeted pandemics - Jews and natural redheads no longer exist in the setting, thanks to this), and contained a retroviral package that, amongst other things, made human immune systems sufficiently efficient that widespread pandemics largely couldn't happen anymore. For those who survived anyway - around 1.5 billion died from the Upgrade.
__________________
GURPS Overhaul |
11-24-2021, 11:58 AM | #10 | |
Join Date: Jul 2007
|
Re: Do Collapses help Technology?
Quote:
__________________
-- Burma! |
|
Thread Tools | |
Display Modes | |
|
|