Shawn Fisher wrote:
Give me a couple engineers, a time machine, and I'll advance any field of
technology you care to name from
its state in 1800 or 1850 to what it was a hundred years later in a year.
You are greatly simplifying a very complex process by assuming people are
rational and that adopting new technology is 1) feasible, and 2) desirable.
Please take your two engineers and go fix the technological infrastructure problems in, say, Somalia. Or just about any developing nation that has not caught up with developed nations in the past fifty years. You know, those places with starving kids and women carrying buckets full of water on their heads. Go take those two engineers and tell me how it turns out. Sorry to say, it may be easy to imagine TL as a hard science issue, but in practice, it's really at the mercy of a number of very non-tech related factors.
The intent of his statement is true, Shawn. Traveller screws the pooch
when it comes to tech levels and always has. Every planet doesn't
reinvent the wheel, discover the advantages of the iron plow, the spiked
gear, how certain common chemicals make gunpowder and how bread mold can
be developed into an antibiotic. Knowledge is portable and this is
something Traveller has never taken into consideration.
In fifty years look at what China has done. Or India. Or Malaysia.
Somalia is a craphole not because of a lack of technology, but because
of a civil war, repressive religion, and personal egos that make
internet egos look normal. :-) Just because a country has the
resources doesn't mean that it has the vision, the political ability, or
cultural stability to achieve greatness...or even reliable running water
and electricity.
--
Kurt Feltenberger
[email protected]/[email protected] // http://www.teotwawki.net
“Before today, I was scared to live, after today, I'm scared I'm not living enough." - Me
"Write in your heart that every day is the best day of the year."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
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