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Several years ago, as I was starting to learn machining, I was captivated by the recursive nature of the equipment. A lathe can make all kinds of things, but it can also make another lathe. It's a von Neumann machine waiting for an operator. Powerful stuff. Except, of course, it immediately raises the same question that biological life does: where did the first one come from? As far as I'm concerned, the genesis of something, the bootstrapping process, is always more interesting than the thing itself.
On the bus ride home from the student shop, I started thinking about the bootstrapping of our civilization. There is, demonstrably, a way to start with twigs and rocks and end up with a laser. What are the steps? What are the exact dependencies in the tech tree? How many different ways are there to get from A to B? And, most intriguingly, how much could a single person do in a lifetime?
I started to develop the concept as background for a cyberpunk novel. I imagined a well-known, if rather geeky and obsessive, hobby of people tracing and recreating the tech tree of civilization. It would serve as a framework for the novel itself, with excerpts from discussion fora and reference books providing the header for each chapter. There would be a standard hierarchical ranking of technologies, with endless arguments about the exact categorization of the use of "native" meteoric iron, or copper ores naturally high in tin content but without any actual intent to alloy. There would flurries of excitement whenever someone proved that a certain level of technology was theoretically redundant and could be skipped. There would be specialty stores, selling ores of various grades and exotic woods, hides and dung. Tourism packages where you could go mine your own raw materials. Most people would be content to prove mastery of a technology once, and then buy the resulting product in bulk for future steps, but there would be a small-but-loud group of purists who would smelt every gram of copper used in the entire process. There would be a common end goal that most people would be trying to achieve, like a radio or a laser, but there would be all kinds of people with their own personal goal. Some would specialize in a specific age and be recognized experts for specific technologies. Some would faithfully follow the development history of a specific culture, while others would try to minimize the steps in the process. It would be a glorious mess of creativity and bonding to our technological roots.
The funny thing is, I liked the idea so much that instead of writing it, I've spent the last few years moving closer and closer to implementing it in real life. A lot of the philosophical arguments I had imagined ended up framing the recent copper smelting for me. Does it count if you buy the ore from ebay and use an electric blower? I'm finding that, while doing so is a perfectly good way to learn the basic techniques, it just doesn't feel complete to me. Someday I'm going to have to do a run with ore I dug out of the ground (once I find some!), using human-powered bellows.
This hobby needs a name, though. I'm trying to document things on the web, because thanks to the power of the internet I know similar minded freaks will eventually find it. (Sooner rather than later, in my experience.) But without a name to tie it all together it's just a random collection of amateur experimental archeology. The full name needs to be a unique term, but preferably it would have a catchy shortform that made a good verb. Something that catches the awe of stepping your way through the results of millions of people-years of struggle and toil. Civilization bootstrapping? Technology spelunking? Resurrecting? My word-powers are failing me here.
I have a suggestion...
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Technofundamentalism?
Devolution?
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That's actually part of the reason I'm vegan. Most everything I eat, I can make from scratch. Either growing, or milling, or preparing from smaller building blocks.
Once I learn how to make a cat... look out.
But would that remove the philosophical problem I have with eating meat? Nothing died... no suffering... I imagine, if I had the time and the funds, I could learn to make it... Hard to say.
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Cannibalism fits into the vegan framework, due to the Oral Sex loophole. I should give it a better name, like "McBride's theory of the transitive nature of animal byproducts." That's kind of long... perhaps "Sean's Axiom." Not to be confused with "Outback's Axiom" which clearly states, "No rules, just right."
The oral sex loophole is where I postulate that sexually active vegans who engage in oral sex, are consuming the animal bi-products of humans. It may be male ejaculate, or female ejaculate. While, at the same time, they will not consume the bi-products of other animals, be it milk... or... we'll stop on that road.
The point is, they will not eat these things due to their source. So, with those pieces of information, we can pretty much declare that I'm having REAL BABY BACK RIBS tonight.
Shit... I don't have a uterus.
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I'm now dreaming of a vegan Shabbat, that includes people who aren't on the guest list.
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What to call the hobby?
It sounds sort of like the SCA in a weird way. It's the anti-SCA, since in the SCA it's quite common to use modern machine tools to make less-modern weapons and stuff.
Must ponder...
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In fact, last time I heard it, I joted down some ideas for a song with one verse for each age, with technically accurate descriptions of each breakthrough technology.
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Some folks at Confluence may know Uplift well enough to perform it. We can hope, anyway. If they do, I'll have the MP3 recorder with me so we can nab it. :)
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I'd go with the name "bootstrapping", myself.
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You should have asked!
Argh! Yes, I should have. In fact, I meant to do that... darnit! :)
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Note to people who publish TV series on DVDs: Charge as much as they did for the "Firefly" series and I'll buy it. Do not charge $75-$150 for it and expect me to buy it.
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Mine too. I remember seeing torrents for it in Torrent Reactor.
[UPDATE] Happiness! I've found links for Connections 1 (http://www.mvgroup.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=1181), 2 (http://www.mvgroup.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=3366), and 3 (http://www.mvgroup.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=3855).
Oh, your entry goes in my memories. :)
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If you haven't already, go and read The Mysterious Island by Jules Verne. (Also available here from Project Gutenberg.)
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Is it hand-made jewelry if I built the CNC mill that makes the jewelry? all the castings, all the machining, all the programming?
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If the nanotech enthusiasts are going anyplace with their passion, I'd call it, "reverse engineering robust nanotech". Just trace the history backwards, and see how tightly you can compress it.
If you get the name of that book, I want to know and buy myself a copy, because this sort of thing is going to loom large in my starship story.
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You could also call it "crusoeing", since it's a lot like Robinson Crusoe's efforts to make a kiln, canoe, and umbrella.
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Once you understand the underlying physical principles, I imagine things like lasers are much easier to construct than you might guess. Vernor Vinge touches on this in "A Fire Upon the Deep (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0812515285)" (actually, he explores the theme a little in almost all his novels). They have to come up with some major technological advantage to give peopple who don't have much tech yet. They figure out how to build radios using only iron age tech, and given the nature of the creatures they're giving the tech to (group minds composed of 3-8 individuals who's brains are in direct communication via a sort of biological modem) the tech advantage is huge. One individual can suddenly be in many different places at once.
In his novel "Marooned in Realtime (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0765308843)" he specifically refers to members of a high tech civilization engaging in 'survival games' where they cast off most of their technology and try to use ancient tech means to survive.
Depending on your particular creative process, you may or may not want to read these prior examples of the theme. :-)
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My perspective on this is always fairly post-world-falling-apart so there is garbage that can be scavenged and cobbled together, although it's hard to say what the availability will be.
I think the biggest obstacle to getting very far with technology-from-scratch, even with good garbage scavenging, is that just staying alive takes really rather a lot of effort. Of course if you're alive now and you have advanced technology to make the just staying alive bit easier, you could get really quite a lot done in terms of technology from scratch.
Techstrapping
Exactly right. Civilisation wasn't able to really advance until we had food surplus and ways to store food. I've often thought that 'social society' for want of a better term would be very necessesary, post collapse. That is to say a way to divide labour duties; "George, you are good with finding food, you go with Edna and bring some back. Edith and I will stay here and build fire, and work on making knives."
I would be very interested to see a 'tech tree' going from Stone age to Laser.
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Here's a guy who has the same kind of interest:
http://www.claytoncramer.com/weblog/2005_03_06_archive.html#111015374164703844
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