Hi all

Isn't it interesting how in the modern world we are surrounded by convenience and technological achievement that few people really understand.

A recent example which got me thinking was what if you were to go back in time to meet some of the greatest minds in history. Most of us could describe the type of things that we have achieved but how many of us could actually replicate what we have now? For example explaining the technology behind a mobile telephone is one thing but would we be able to make a working version? How many of us could replicate the types of medicine we use today in a primitive/medieval environment? Or even show how electricity can be made and utilised beyond a simplistic level (we all did the citrus battery experiment in high school).

Scary thought isn't it?

 

The number one key to invention is the belief that the end result is attainable and usable. Whether we would have the skills to replicate, is offset by the knowledge that it can and has been done. Therefore we are halfway home before we start.

 

Because we have the knowledge to create something doesn't mean we have the material.

 

Just add MacGyver to the that first 1/2 and we've got a Grand Slam.

 

That was kind of my thinking. For example would we have the knowledge to gather/create the required components. For example a fridge requires first electric, cables, wires, specific gasses etc to work. Each part would be required in order for it to work.

 

I could build a few things. Though building requires tools. It's hard to build tools without first having tools.

 

When my oldest son was a boy, McGuyver was his hero. He never missed a show.

 

*chuckling
With my Matter transformation unit fabricating new things is no problem.

 

I have a Matter transportation unit...my toilet.

 

Where's Dr. Who when you need him?

 

I guess it is a good thing that my grand uncle, a Choctaw, taught me to knap stone tools.

 

Not so long ago, one could conceivably learn everything by one's early twenties. A 19th century liberal classical education, to the postdoctoral level, sufficed. One could achieve it by one's early twenties. Some great men (yes, for the most part they were all men) did it much faster. John Stuart Mill, for instance, learned essentially everything-- and I do mean everything-- by his late teens. (But his father was a maniacal prick.)

Funny the OP mentions going back in time and describing the operation of a mobile phone.

I would challenge anyone to do that. Give a complete description of an iPhone6. Not only the device itself, but also its apps, and communications transmission method, the packete protocols and routing that facilitate the movement of messages, the principles of fiberoptics and broadband communications through which the messages move, the power systems and grids that energize those systems, the management of those systems.....

Fact is, no single person on earth could give such an explanation.

Modern technology is layered. The layers are many thousands deep, like vast Matrioshka dolls.

If you could send an iPad tablet back to the seventeenth century... forget about explaining its operation. The natives would set it up in a tabernacle and venerate it as a god. And that's with a dead battery! They'd be awed by the dead machine's case.

 

Wether or not i could explain anything , i would love to travel back in time far enough to see many things on earth before those destructive little pricks we call humans came along . It would be a sight to see the United states before any humans set foot on the ground just to see how nature built earth and how pristine it was

 

Yeah, that could be a tough nut to crack...for a mere human. Speaking of cracking tough nuts...

 

Hey D.L. aren't those black crows intelligent?

 

I'd like to go back in time and see Hawaii before Captain Cook "discovered" it. They say the natives were really fine physical specimens. Especially the Chiefs. They were extremely healthy people living in a paradise.

 

I have thought about that eventuality, several times in fact, because that very scenario has occurred TWICE in recorded human history. And the world was much worse off for centuries.

The first was the destruction of the Great Library in Alexandria, Egypt. I could not find a consensus of when the library was burned to the ground or by whom. It may have been some time between 200 and 400 of the Common Era. What is NOT in dispute is that the library was the largest and broadest collection of human knowledge in the Ancient World. Its destruction meant the loss of literally centuries of accumulated human knowledge and know-how.

The second was the fall of the Roman Empire. The buildings and infrastructure of Rome were among the most highly advanced in the world at that time. The level military and civil engineering embodied in its weapons, roads, its aqueducts, and sewer system were unparalleled. After it fell, there was no one who knew how to build an arch or vaulted ceiling, no one to build new or repair old aqueducts, etc. The population of Europe could no longer exploit sources of clean water, feed itself, etc.

It took 1,000 years for Europe to regain the technology, knowledge, and skill that was lost in Alexandria and Rome and replicate those former societies. And even then, most of that knowledge came from the Arabs (Moors) who had colonized Spain and Portugal, and been driven out by the French (hence the Renaissance era).

There is an elevated likelihood of us modern humans may have to recreate the world after a catastrophic loss. Yellowstone Park is a super volcano. Geologists estimate that it erupts every 600,000 years, with the last eruption 640,000 years ago. We are due for one pretty soon! When a super volcano erupts, it disrupts much of the world through a volcanic winter. The last super volcano eruption was 75,000 years ago in Indonesia, Mount Toba. In the aftermath, humans almost went extinct!

 

If such a event would occur, perhaps mankind would unite and pool their resources (knowledge) for the preservation of the human race.