tampering t1_j29m24s wrote
>A monk spends fifteen years making a gilded copy of a diagram (of a transistor) he does not understand only to have that “worthless” gilded copy destroyed by robbers
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The whole book is an allegorical retelling of the fall of antiquity, the dark ages and the Renaissance. Specifically events such as the sacking of the Library of Alexandria as the knowledge of antiquity was lost. It is a bit fanciful, but it is possible that the ancient Greeks were only a century or so from inventing things like the steam engine. Certainly objects like the Antikythera mechanism show what kinds of technology they were be capable of at the end of the Hellenistic age.
It would be 1500+ years before we could make machines as complicated again.
Electrical_Jaguar596 t1_j2aot2h wrote
What’s crazy is the Greeks did invent the steam engine, they just didn’t figure out its practical use. They were so close to the Industrial Revolution it’s mind boggling.
bhbhbhhh t1_j2bahbs wrote
The industrial revolution came from a large number of economic factors that England had in 1750 and Greece never did. The actual technologies themselves were actually a bit secondary.
https://cepr.org/voxeu/columns/why-was-industrial-revolution-british
laconicflow t1_j2bv53m wrote
Industrial revolution in the Roman Republic would have been nuts, I wonder what would have happened.
Redjay12 OP t1_j29n2k7 wrote
at the end of the book a priest thinks of all fallen societies and lists Rome and America. With a second nuclear holocaust we will just go through everything all over again. we are doomed to these rise and fall because of our violent tendencies. very bleak
tampering t1_j29qbj0 wrote
It does seem to take a dim view of the idea of 'human progress' and suggest that 'cyclical rise and fall' is the fate of humans.
Redjay12 OP t1_j2a3wg4 wrote
yes especially because a spaceship that was meant to colonize other worlds gets obliterated by nuclear holocaust. After 700 years of rebuilding society. Pretty explicitly saying we will be forever doomed to this rise and fall and that it is inescapable. in his time as well as ours, that’s bleak
Griffen_07 t1_j2a9u93 wrote
You want bleak, look at the current theory that we are destroying our ability to leave Earth by creating a giant junk cloud in low orbit. We are already having to track all kinds of junk to protect our satellites and more crap seems to arrive daily.,
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