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Arguably 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 magi
by emiliobumachar 14y ago
Arguably 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.