Alternate time.....Alternate tech

General Forums Off-topic Chat
1

Is it just me, or has the forum seemed a little slow (posting wise) the last few days?

Well, here is another thing to think about. We’ve all seen Star Wars, and Star Treck, and Star Gate (…too many star’s), etc… etc… etc… These are all Sci-Fi films, but where do they fit in on the chronological timeline of relaity. Would Star Wars be in the future, or in an alternate reality? What about the two worlds of Star Gate? Obviously present day earth is one, but when and where is the other?

This leads to thought in something else. On Star Wars, they are pretty ‘high-tech’, but it’s a different kind’ve tech. I was wondering, what would it be like, and where would we be today, had reaseach and development gone another route? For instance, what if the transister as we think of it today hadn’t been first discovered as electronic, but chemical or optic. Or what if instead of working our way up through metal alloys to the materials we have today, we discovered some other process to make metal stronger than today, a very long time ago? How would this affect society today? Or instead of architecture and skyscrapers, what if we built structures strait into the earth. Like cities out of mountains and sub-terrainian worlds. What if, instead of the electrical lightbuld, be used some type of other luminescent method?

This would make a good theme for a blender pic. Some of dickies stuff reminds me of this, such as the underground fairy-like girl.

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Star Wars = another galaxy a long long time ago.
Star Trek = future (depends a bit on what show you are talking about)
Star Gate = present time. The other world you are talking about I suppose would be the desert one from the movie? This was just a slave world with humans taken from earth a few thousand years ago. They were not allowed to develop better tech.

The other question can be answered easily. Corporations will most of the time want to choose the path that gives them the most income.

Carving appartements out of a mountain is extremly expensive.

The thing about doing things in different ways is not something that I think matters.

If you look through history you will find that most modern inventions (pre 1900) had allready been invented, but forgotten. When they were rediscovered they worked basicly the same. But most times better.

3

Hello!!! :smiley:

There may be (or may not) alternate universes and we may be stuck into this side of the “Star Gate”.

The sure thing is, that our civilization took so far a specific route, under certain circumstances. Sometimes “progress” was stopped by some fanatic stubborn people (take the Holly inquisition for example) and other times, brilliant minds helped mankind to take off to other “spheres”.

In my opinion our civilization has progressed, so far, in a natural way.

Maybe if we had moved to a more “advanced” technological state, earlier, maybe we would have been in an even better position than now or maybe we would have accelerated our self destruction. Remember the myth, about Atlantis? They were supposed (if ever existed) even more advanced than we are now, only they brought their own doom (at least what the myth says) upon their heads.

Anyway, we can not tell for sure…

Thanks.

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I’m not wondering if things should’ve been done differently, or if we made a mistake, or anything. All I’m wondering is, is what would it be like had our technology taken a different turn.

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and I say that even though the circumstances might be different the end result will be more or less the same.

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Even if the buildings were different, or even if we had different vehicles or other sources of energy, I strongly believe that the people would be still the same.

People have always been the same at all periods of time and will always be the same. No matter how well hidden our passions our disadvantages or our advantages will be, we will always remain the same. With the same hopes and expectations.

Thus I think, things would be still the same.

But if you are referring in buildings etc. well why don’t we try to visualize it with blender.

Yes! It could be a good theme for blender pic.

Bye…

7

That dosn’t matter. I’m trying to say, imagine the difference. What do you think I’m talking about. Of course people will still be more the less the same, and so will society. But what about the details. What if cars came about differently, what if weapons were invented differntly, what if the things that we used everyday was different.

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the clear answer would be that it would not be as good.

if my chair was pointy instead of flat it would hurt my ass

9

ah! that’s such a nice way to put it :stuck_out_tongue:

Martin

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what about more basic ‘technologies’: like language, writing, monetary exchange, religion etc.
what if we never invented the nation state? or democracy? what if we always had absolutists dictatorships?
we can see in more or less microcosm ‘alternatives’ erupting all around us, surviving, dying, becoming mainstream or rejecting it. The way to discover differences is probably not just to use the imagination, but also to open ones eyes to how many alternatives actually are happening all the time. There is nothing new under the sun could translate to: Human beings are capable of all they can imagine, and have probably already done it, more than once.
So read history. read the news. talk to that person from another country. pay a visit to the local comune- or attend a small business convention. You’ll soon start noticing that people are living ‘alternate realities’ all the time, that they use language differently, that many cannot read or write, and that some of them are totally indifferent/alien to the concept of religion.
So its not that ‘alternatives’ are not worth considering. Its just that they are around us all the time. We’re always doing lots of different things in differing ways. There is no lost path, because there is not only one path.
I will now leave the box

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again. just look through history to find out what such things would result in.

no need to wonder about it

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Do you have an imagination?

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Well, I think that except from the small “chair problem” Green mentioned,
it would still be the same.

No matter if they stab you with a simple knife or shoot you with a Star Trek’s phaser, the outcome is the same:

You would die…

The only difference would be if we had different humans or…
if the apes had managed to become the dominant spieces, instead of us…

14

That is not the point either. Of course you will die! People lives are shaped by their environment. Your environment is made up of surronding objects. I’m talking about what would it be like if things (in your environment) were different. You seem to be thinking that just because history followed this path, it is the only path. You are ignoring possible contingencies.

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If we had taken a different path, supposing they do exist, our lives would be completly different. Arthur Clarke outlined something similar to what your asking in “Second Dawn”. Supposing for a second that we evolved from apes, not saying that I think we did, imagine if the parent of our species had his DNA messed up by cosmic rays so that all of his decendents didn’t have hands. We’d be completly different. Our world around us is on a certain path, but that doesn’t mean it’s the only one. However, most of them depend on the people who are taking them. Like Green said, we wouldn’t make a pointed chair but an inteligent lamp shade might. I’d say that there are different paths, but the ones we take are largely pre-determined. Other humanoids would follow a path similar to ours, but telepathic horses would take a different one.

As for imagining the different paths, it’d be hard to say if we can truly imagine them. Our minds, for the most part, are ridgidly set by our experiences. We can imagine all sorts of different things that could be, but I would challenge you to imagine something that is not dependent on the way our world is shaped.

I’d also say that we are not so much shaped by our environment as we shape our environment. Look at what we do to the planet. We cut down and destroy the natural disorder and replace it with out order. We destroy the open spaces and replace them with hollow buildings, all of them deigned to suit our fancies. The environment does drive us, but only by providing us obstacles for us to overcome, chances to impose our will on our suroundings.

Goo

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Ok, I guess what I’m trying to get across. Even if the world today is the same, what if the time lines shifted. What if you were wondering through the jungle, and found a city covered in vines that had the same construcution techniques and architecture as todays buildings. What if someone a long time ago, discovered things like today, but those things stayed and were lost in that civilization, or what if that person didn’t share them. Then when it was lost, they had to be re-invented agian. I’ve got this thought from certain images, such as the flooded New York on the movie AI, and the city on The 5th Element, and things like that.

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I wrote:

There is nothing new under the sun could translate to: Human beings are capable of all they can imagine, and have probably already done it, more than once

Green wrote:

again. just look through history to find out what such things would result in.

no need to wonder about it

are you responding to me? agreeing or disagreeing? I’m confused as to what you are saying- you seem to be re-iterating one of my points in disagreement ??!!?
If fact I’ve said this many times in my posts: alternatives, or their traces can be found everywhere you look.
I do disagree with some of your points. but that does not seem to be one of them.

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what about more basic ‘technologies’: like language, writing, monetary exchange, religion etc.
what if we never invented the nation state? or democracy? what if we always had absolutists dictatorships?

Thats what I was responding to

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Inventions get forgotten all the time.

What do you mean with “like today” with computers? such things are to complicated to be invented, developed and mass produced in one city, not to mention that they depend on alot of other inventions.

I think what you are after is fantasy. For such fantasies to happen you will havto ignore some parts of reality.

inventions havto come in the right time, not only does it havto be a need for them, but the people in power will havto want them to become a reality.

If this was not the case we could have had the steam engine a long long time go, but since the people in power didnt want to get rid of the slaves nothing came out of it.

20

acasto wrote:

I’m talking about what would it be like if things (in your environment) were different.

Yes ofcourse, the environment plays a very important role, in the whole procedure. If environmental conditions were different, then our buildings and our tools would have had a different “shape”.

Let’s take for example what Goo said:

imagine if the parent of our species had his DNA messed up by cosmic rays so that all of his decendents didn’t have hands. We’d be completly different.

In such a case then we wouldn’t have had advanced (technologically I mean) at all. Imagine if we had hands but we didn’t have thumbs. A great deal of our advance as a spieces, depended on the fact that we had developed thumbs so we were able to handle “delicately”, certain “objects” (like rocks) as tools (and a larger brain, with enough imagination ofcourse).

On the other hand, the Arabs for example during the middle ages, developed an extraordinary culture and got more advanced than the Europeans, at the same period, in all areas (astronomy, maths, etc.), under an extremely hostile environment (desert).

In my opinion that means, that maybe under better circumstances, yes we would have had spaceships and Star Gates, sooner…
…or maybe under worse circumstances we would still have to live in caves to protect from cold. But sooner or later, evolution would have found its route (although a little different in any case), to progress.

Thanks…

P.S.: In case we didn’t have thumbs, the apes would definetely become the dominant spieces. They’ve got thumbs even on their feet!!! :stuck_out_tongue: