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A smarty pants answer would be, yes, but it took 2000 years.... The problem with this is that you end up with lots of additions to the premise. So, you ask the
by alan_cx 14y ago
A smarty pants answer would be, yes, but it took 2000 years....
The problem with this is that you end up with lots of additions to the premise. So, you ask the question: "Could Romans build a computer, if plans were magically given to them?. Then, you have to say, if they had plans they understood, then if they had plans using a certain technology, then if they had zero, and if they had an understanding of x, then y, then z, and on it goes. In then end, it becomes pretty clear the answer is no because of the sheer number of caveats we have to add to make the original premise work.
The whole thing seems to be a bit of an idolisation of an ancient civilisation. Its like we want them to have had mystical powers. Like how some people want to connect ancient Egyptians and Mayans to aliens. This is the fantasy of forgotten super knowledge.
Or, consider this: do we seriously that we could build something that we designed and built 2000 years from now? Something that could reasonably include or be based on alien technology and knowledge.
A connected tangent type thought, and I have no idea where it goes; but how come Romans were so clever, but current tribes around the world, sort of, aren't? How does that work? Is it a resource thing? Environment thing? Seems a bit odd to me that even now we have societies who are actually behind a society 2000 years old.
- emiliobumachar 14y agoArguably they were just an insight away from the hot-air baloon, so yes, I think there ought to be something 2000 years ahead that we can build today if we magically get the plans.
- jerf 14y agoThere's probably some really impressive nanotechnology we could theoretically build today, bootstrapping off our today's tech fairly quickly, if we just knew what we were doing. I don't mean necessarily a full-on self-replicating machine, necessarily, but who knows, maybe even that, with the right bootstrapping sequence. We just don't really know what we're doing today. In A Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge, one of the minor points is the bootstrapping hobby that some in the galactic civilization undertake, trying to determine the minimal steps that could be transmitted to primitive civilization to most rapidly bootstrap them to "real" civilization. I find myself curious about that too, and would probably enjoy that hobby, but alas, we lack the knowledge and perspective to properly play today.
- hexagonc 14y agoA connected tangent type thought, and I have no idea where it goes; but how come Romans were so clever, but current tribes around the world, sort of, aren't? How does that work? Is it a resource thing? Environment thing? Seems a bit odd to me that even now we have societies who are actually behind a society 2000 years old. It depends on what you mean by clever. If you mean proficiency at building tools and mechanical technology, then I suspect the reason is because the Romans had a culture conducive to developing certain types of technology. How much technology is derived from the need for military conquest? How much is military conquest dependent on the type of religion you have? How much of the capacity to develop technology is dependent on having a privileged class that has enough free time to think about things unrelated to food and reproduction? These are political and social conditions and they depend on the political and social conditions of surrounding tribes. The people that still live in a tribal society today have found a cultural and resource equilibrium with their environment. They are fortunate enough to have avoided or overcome all external and internal pressure to change. They don't need to develop technology because their environment and way of life don't require it.