As a thought experiment to see how important inventions and knowledge actually are: imagine a world where we lost all tools and had to restart again, but this time with the knowledge we now have. How fast would we be back at the technological level of today?
Assume an earth-scale disaster leaving only modern day people (so we dismiss possible evolution in intelligence), an environment similar to earth, say 10.000 years BC so that we are certified free of the last ice age, and -remarkable – a copy of Wikipedia (or sufficient people to represent this knowledge).
Would we be capable to progress much faster the next time round? Or would we be bound again by the painfully slow process of gathering sufficient food to even start working on technological progress?
Let's take an example: we learned a lot about food over fifty millenia, but it wouldn't really help us hunting. We probably lost more skills there than we won and Wikipedia surely won't help us catch a bear. However there are more ways to make a sustainable living and farming is well understood now.
In this assumed second-coming we don't need to wait until Mendel was done crossing peas and learning about genetics. We know it works, we know what to look for and we could be breeding cattle within a generation. Or can't we because our cows would be eaten by wolves and bears and we can't get rid of them as we don't have guns or even proper fences?
Well we now know how to make steel so why don't we skip that whole stone age? Guns might be a bit difficult but iron would be good enough for decent fences to keep the foxes out.
The recipe is easy enough: smelt iron ore (we would know where to find it tnx to Wiki) in a hot oven with enough carbon and out comes so called pig iron. All you need is a way to get the fire hot enough and those stone-agers already knew to light a fire.
Admittedly it needs to be hotter than your average campfire but unlike our predecessors we know this so we could make a clay oven right away, pump oxygen into the fire with improvised bellows (we have cow skin remember) and process the brittle pig iron into usable steel.
Or couldn't we? As we need hammers to change the unusable iron into something resembling steel and we skipped the stone age remember. Oh and steel is a hopeless material for a technological backward society ('us' in this thought experiment) as it's actually to hard to work with without tools we can't produce without … steel.
To make complex forms and even think about machinery you need to cast iron or bronze as our ancestors did as a first step. They used bronze because it melted at a lower temperature, was soft enough to model when it was cold and was harder than your basic pure iron.
However these complex forms could only be sculpted thanks to experienced artisans who had learned their trade over generations working wood and clay. If you can't create a mold with a high precision even a simple engine is out of reach.
This all started after seeing a video of someone casting his own engine block in his backyard. That led to interest in the history of steel production which like most 'ancient' technologies popped up all over the globe with sometimes thousands of years apart between regions. Before I knew I was pondering on the question how important knowledge and inventions actually are.
Do you think we could re-invent ourselves much faster thanks to all the ideas, inventions and experience mankind accumulated or are we like children who have to go through all the phases?
You must watch some "Rough science" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rough_Science
Not exactly what you are saying, but a good idea about recreating science in some "post-apocaliptic" environments.
Sounds good +Víktor Bautista i Roca I will check if it's available online somewhere.
Yip +Gary Roth that's why I assumed 10.000 BC for our environment. The Wiki would just be a gift of the gods 😉
I think before that question could be answered, one would have to answer this one: Would people make the same technical decisions in light of this knowledge?
In such a post-disaster event, this knowledge would become the currency of whatever new society developed (and one surely would), meaning that, as a commodity of value, it would be hoarded, spent, and traded, and those who had this knowledge would restrict access to it.
This would create another class-based society, complete with the same conflicts that our current ones have.
The point (if one were to follow those lines of speculation to their logical ends): we would not–indeed, could not recreate ourselves as we are now, at any speed, given the above parameters.
Interesting follow-up on my thought experiment +Ғ ΜіснæL Sŧuŧz
I concentrated on technological developments, but while writing wondered if society, arts, culture etc shouldn't evolve as well and if they would be restricting factors.
Interesting questions. I think there are other factors that have to be considered, such as passing this knowledge on to succeeding generations. Particularly if they do not see the usefulness of it, it may be forgotten before it can be used. Another factor would be what would the current cultural goals be? Post disaster might reset the mindset to preserving or nurturing the ecology (for example) which might lead to selective use or retention of the knowledge.
Quite a bit of current technology depends on volume of production which simply won't be possible in such a scenario. So whether knowledge of computers would be held long enough to recreate that (or if it would be seen as useful enough to retain)? Who knows?
How education is approached in this scenario is absolutely key, I think.
Do we get a sociological history of 10,000BC to 2000AD to learn from as well? If it's the whole of Wikipedia, I guess we do. Because I think it's the social pitfalls that would hold us back. It's useless to have a rapid and early industrial revolution if it's all wasted on invading Persia or recreating Fox News.
How is this industrial revolution to be powered? In the thought experiment, maybe we get to put all that oil and coal back in the ground and re-use it. Mankind's one Promethean trick is to invent fire. Then to replace burning vegetation with burning flammable rocks, liquids, and gases. It might be possible to have a full industrial revolution that goes from charcoal to solar and renewables without going via coal and oil but it would be a lot slower.
As an alternate thought experiment, imagine that Spartacus had won and Rome had become a mercantile democracy in about AD250. And then that they had not collapsed but gone straight for an enlightenment like circa 1650, bypassing the dark ages and early medieaval. I don't find that especially hard to believe. In that case, they would have hit the industrial revolution and computer ages a 1000 years earlier. So what would the world look like now? (apart from trying to do C++ and Javascript in Latin!). We'd also be enjoying life 1000 years after peak oil and runaway climate change.
This entire thread is reminiscent of the Long Now and the Long Library along with a persistent Post-Millennial desire to turn back the clock and start again. Sorry, I screwed up that game run, can we just hit reset and have another go? I'm sure I can do the whole of GTA in under 26 minutes this time around. Except you can't. There is no reset button. There is no second chance.
Another associated thought. Take a copy of Wikipedia right now. How would you preserve it for a target lifetime of 10,000 years?
Knowing about former existing and working tools and techniques, as well as about e.g. physical and mechanical principles would really fasten things.
Anyway, ending up in a state 10.000 BCE would leave us on a pure stone age level without the possibility to make use of our knowledge, except in the few parts of the world where raw metals and ore could be found without extensive mining.
More essential, the remaining knowledge about farming and breeding would help the survivors way more than any knowledge about actually unreachable technologies.
My own premise is of course flawed: if all six billions of us ended up in 10.000BC as good as everyone would die from hunger.
That disaster would completely destroy any attempt to build up some civilization and a war would start over the one copy of Wiki.
So for the sake of the thought experiment we assume just 1 million people, selected on knowledge and skills and 'dumped' in post-apocalypse earth in selected areas where water, food, animals and ore are in abundance.
Besides, this thought experiment is played out in almost every colonize outerspace sf story 😉
I wasn't aware of the Long Now Foundation +Julian Bond so my choice for 10.000 BC wasn't related.
My main interest is in finding out how much inventions and knowledge have been for human progress.
When you read f.i. about the Bronze Age you start wondering if we couldn't have skipped a few millenia of human history if we had known how to handle iron.
Then again as +Wolf Weber points out, you need to have access to ores which are not necessarily found at the border of the Nile where farming is relatively easy.
To solve it you need transport, meaning domestic animals, meaning breeding which takes time. But you also need conservation technologies to bring food along on the trip and clothes if you have to enter colder areas, etc.
It's a large puzzle even without socio-cultural requirements of having someone / some class willing to compensate you for the trouble of finding that core. You can't do it all yourself so it requires a guild like structure with division of labor, training and education. (correct +Cindy Brown )
+Max Huijgen, given the scenario in your post, only a few millions out of the 6.something billions would survive the initial disaster.
Also, as many wars and natural disasters in history are showing, humans have an extreme ability to survive, are quickly adopting to worse situations and would survive as a species, except there were nothing eatable left at all.
See three comments up +Wolf Weber we crossed each other.
I think it would depend greatly on the nature of the disaster and which people it left as survivors. The political, social, and religious makeup of those survivors would dictate a great deal of how humanity would progress forward because they would create social structures and societies based on that makeup.
Thanks +Max Huijgen for an interesting thought problem. And to the comment-makes…also interesting.
In "reality", +Gary Roth nailed the problem of resources already depleted. Coal and oil will not be an energy option…hence any industrialization is problematic. However, given Max's 10,000 BD environment, that is solved.
The other comment that struck me was +Cindy Brown's concern about passing information on to succeeding generations. A printing press would be ideal but would then revisit the issue of resources (how to make the type set?).
I've explore this last a bit in the novel I'm working on (sending present day protagonists back to the 11th century: wwww.waltsocha.com). In it, I'm assuming the information is written down and treated as "prophecies". Not quite a religious thing, more of a cultural. Getting back to the thought problem, perhaps have as much as possible written down on paper and ink (something that isn't too difficult).
Final thought, given Jared Diamond's "Guns, Germs and Steel", a further question would be: what is the geography of the region in which our survivors find themselves? Are there domesticable animals (or can any that survived live there?). And are there existing grain plants (or can any that survived also live there?).
Some key 10,000 year projects
Long Now http://longnow.org/
Library http://longnow.org/essays/library/
File storage http://longserver.org/
1000 year Music Composition http://longplayer.org/
This seems appropriate for this post.
http://www.engadget.com/2014/10/23/cern-picture-identification/
CERN is digitising it's photos. Except that a large number of them from 1950 to 1985 have no captions and they no longer know what the devices in the pictures did.
Interpreting that Wikipedia snapshot may still assume a level of knowledge about the world that had been lost.
Lol +Julian Bond that didn't take an apocalypse
What a fascinating question +Max Huijgen (which is why I circled you – to answer your question from a few weeks ago)
Yes, we would advance quicker, however not as fast as many think.
I am reading an interesting (but poorly written book) on the development of the steam engine and realize how many basic skills we have lost due to mechanization. (How to make steal is not easy.. and who really knows how)
What a great party discussion this would be.
Yes +Ian Rumbles when I look at the first cars f.i. I often wonder if we could still do this fine mechanical bodywork by hand.
Did you guys see this? There was an article on Slashdot the other day about it. http://www.survivorlibrary.com/
Thanks for the link +Sandy Fischler I'll start preparing myself for the apocalypse 😉
From http://www.survivorlibrary.com/
The Survivor Library is a growing collection of books on a wide range of skills from the mundane (how to clean a chicken for cooking) through the somewhat unusual
how to build a telegraph system
what’s the best wood to use when building a WWI era biplane
how to build instruments to control a steam engine
how to build a steamship
how to operate a steam locomotive
how to attach a plow to a horse
how to manufacture a plow
The purpose of the books is to provide a repository of skill knowledge that has been abandoned, forgotten or deemed no longer of any use as we have progressed in our technological capabilities.
+Max Huijgen I have been giving this more thought. If such a a disaster did occur, the Amish communities would be excellent resources on the basics. I have always thought in the event of a society meltdown, I was always planning to head to Sugarcreek, OH where there is a thriving Amish community.
Would surely be the best place, but even the Amish are dependent on modern technology +Ian Rumbles They use kerosine, glass etc without being able to make it from nature.