Technology and the naming of names

[gfish]

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.

Comments

[callibr8]

I'm not sure what to call the hobby, but your description reminds me strongly of one of my all-time favorite filk songs, Uplift, by Andrew Eigel.

[gfish.livejournal.com]

Aha! I had been meaning to figure out the name of that song. I think of it regularly in this context, particularly the line 'in the cellar of history'. Good imagery, that.

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.

[vixyish.livejournal.com]

Oh! I'm sorry, I thought I'd told you that I went and looked up the name of it right after Pondfilk (which was the last time we heard it). I still have a tab to the lyrics open in Firefox on Phedre, if you want to go look. Blake said he had a recording of it, but Jenn and I couldn't find it. I've been meaning to ask around other filkers; I've just been forgetting that part.

[callibr8]

COOL! I hope your jottings-down become a song soon.

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. :)

[orawnzva.livejournal.com]

You should have asked!

[orawnzva.livejournal.com]

Also, the idea of actually doing this is totally awesome. I can imagine some kind of advanced scout camp, where a troop of scouts are shipped off to the woods with no technology at all and are supposed to build a radio by the end of the summer.

I'd go with the name "bootstrapping", myself.

[gfish.livejournal.com]

Maybe I should get myself listed as a guide for the metalworking merit badge. Quite a bit of is left to their discretion...

[callibr8]

Orawnzva wrote:
You should have asked!

Argh! Yes, I should have. In fact, I meant to do that... darnit! :)