Magic and Technology

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avwolf
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Re: Magic and Technology

#61 Post by avwolf »

Brocktree wrote:
avwolf wrote:Another thing to remember is that the Templar know full well that the only way they'd win a war against Basitins is if it was a war of attrition. And considering how tough Basitins are, they'd probably destroy the Templar before they could be beaten. The Basitins have the means and capability to land soldiers, establish a beachhead, and pound through anything the Humans can throw at them. A united Basidian people is a nightmare scenario for the Templar.
How do you figure?
They're a race of soldiers. All of them are elite warriors, immune to poison, resistant to disease, with a discipline second to none, and neigh on unkillable. None of those things can be said about Humans. The only thing Humans have going for them is that they outnumber the Basitins, and they can likely outbreed their furry adversaries. (Well, okay, Humans are also devilishly clever, and are bound to notice, as I have, that caltrops are the great weakness of the Basidian soldiery, so I expect that natural Human inventiveness would help a lot, but innovation requires time. Time I doubt the Basitins would grant.) I expect a united Basitin force to be like a hammer on an anvil. In the words of Covenant, "don't stand in the shadow of a hammer." Sure, Trace can take them on. But he does the same thing to everyone he meets, and he's more powerful here than when he last fought the Templar. He's powered by pure, unadulterated plot. The only thing that could save Humanity would be to massively increase weapons technology and to fight smart. Or do as they have tried -- remove your opponent's ability to fight before the war even begins.

Now, onto the topic:
Sebbie wrote:Hmm...in an attempt to get us back on track, I will repeat the following question, which I never got a good thorough answer to because of our off-topic tangent:
Sebbie wrote:What if the world comes into balance; will the development of technology, both magical and not, continue? Will the three races develop a stable global economy? More importantly, will the technological developments of the races follow similar paths through exchange of ideas and technology in a new era of peace, or will each develop in their own direction: humans and Keidran developing a technology based on magic, Basitins instead developing non-magical technology similar to that in our world?
I suppose that all depends on what you mean by "balance" and how the world comes to it. :P I don't expect Keidran technology updates particularly quickly -- they're too short-lived for much "pure" research. Anything that's not of immediate benefit is difficult for them to manage or reasonably conceptualize. Humankind is well known for a couple things -- striving to invent anything to better help us kill each other, and working hard to create things to let us work less hard. Certain technologies there would appeal to Basitins, though the question remains as to how their wargames shape their technological development. They probably won't go much for technologies that makes their work easier, but the other side of that coin is going to be very attractive: technology can make their work more efficient. Agricultural and mining/smelting technology is probably of particular interest to the Basitins, so that they can increase their yields for their limited resources.

I would anticipate that, as people tend to build technology off of what they have, Humans, and to an extent Keidran, will have blended magical and nonmagical technology. (Very few innovations are true "leaps" of knowledge. We almost always "stand on the shoulders of giants" as we advance.) As Basitins have no magical talents, they're most likely to develop and utilize only non-magical technology. Keidran technology will probably be more "mystical" than Human technology as well. The Templar have already begun to demonstrate a very...scientific approach to magic and the development of magical technology. From Natani's comments, it seems likely that the Keidran (probably because their lifespans limit their research capabilities) have a more mystical view of magic. They use it in a more natural context, rather than analyzing it and manipulating the underlying principles.
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Re: Magic and Technology

#62 Post by WindDragon »

I agree, which brings up the interesting point of the differences between Keidran, Human, and Basitin development in technology. The Basitin are a society who have, up until now, solely relied on their physical abilities and weapons to fight. Keidran are pretty much the opposite, relying on magic before they resort to direct physical force. Humans fall somewhere in the middle...

Whether or not Tom did this on purpose, it does give us a range of different technological standpoints. If we look at the Keidran, we don't see much advancement (and actually remind me a lot of early civilizations). Basitins, on the other hand, remind me more of medieval societies, probably because their society still relies almost solely on military power. Humans seem to be the most "advanced" (quotations because the word advanced can be viewed in several ways). They remind me of the industrial revolution.
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Re: Magic and Technology

#63 Post by coal »

WindDragon wrote:I agree, which brings up the interesting point of the differences between Keidran, Human, and Basitin development in technology. The Basitin are a society who have, up until now, solely relied on their physical abilities and weapons to fight. Keidran are pretty much the opposite, relying on magic before they resort to direct physical force. Humans fall somewhere in the middle...

Whether or not Tom did this on purpose, it does give us a range of different technological standpoints. If we look at the Keidran, we don't see much advancement (and actually remind me a lot of early civilizations). Basitins, on the other hand, remind me more of medieval societies, probably because their society still relies almost solely on military power. Humans seem to be the most "advanced" (quotations because the word advanced can be viewed in several ways). They remind me of the industrial revolution.
I don't know I feel as though the humans rely more on magic than the keidren, the only reason that the keidren aren't as advanced or seem that way, is because they probably don't feel the need to grow as a society more than the rate than they are going at right now, which is pretty slow.

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Re: Magic and Technology

#64 Post by Sebbie »

WindDragon wrote:I agree, which brings up the interesting point of the differences between Keidran, Human, and Basitin development in technology. The Basitin are a society who have, up until now, solely relied on their physical abilities and weapons to fight. Keidran are pretty much the opposite, relying on magic before they resort to direct physical force. Humans fall somewhere in the middle...

Whether or not Tom did this on purpose, it does give us a range of different technological standpoints. If we look at the Keidran, we don't see much advancement (and actually remind me a lot of early civilizations). Basitins, on the other hand, remind me more of medieval societies, probably because their society still relies almost solely on military power. Humans seem to be the most "advanced" (quotations because the word advanced can be viewed in several ways). They remind me of the industrial revolution.
I agree; I think the methodical approach that the Templar take in studying magic has them perfectly poised for their equivalent of an industrial revolution. As avwolf said, the Keidran are limited in their acquisition of knowledge by their shorter life spans, while the Basitin don't appear to pursue technological advances for technology's sake. I seem to recall, however, that Basitin have even longer life spans than humans; if that's true, and if the life span issue does play a factor, how could that affect the Basitin's technological development?

Huh, I wonder what the technology in Lyn'knoll is like...

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Re: Magic and Technology

#65 Post by WindDragon »

I'd like to think that since Keidran age through generations faster than humans, they'd advance a little bit quicker, but maybe they just don't have enough time to develop technology before they die? (you know, in between the lovin's)
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Re: Magic and Technology

#66 Post by Sebbie »

WindDragon wrote:I'd like to think that since Keidran age through generations faster than humans, they'd advance a little bit quicker, but maybe they just don't have enough time to develop technology before they die? (you know, in between the lovin's)
Well, it takes time to simply think through a problem and come up with an idea, and that's generally something only one mind can do at a time. So you'd need them to live long enough for the best minds to be able to come up with ideas and theories and explain them to the others before they die. Then the others need to live long enough to understand those ideas, elaborate on them, and implement them, and teach the more advanced versions to the next generation, etc. The smaller the life span, the less information one has time to absorb over one's lifetime, and the less they can contribute. I think at the relatively early stages of development the Keidran are at now, it's probably not a problem, but it could pose a limit if they were to ever try to industrialize.

...did that make any sense? My vision's going blurry from wont of sleep...

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Re: Magic and Technology

#67 Post by supervanman64 »

Sebbie wrote:
WindDragon wrote:I'd like to think that since Keidran age through generations faster than humans, they'd advance a little bit quicker, but maybe they just don't have enough time to develop technology before they die? (you know, in between the lovin's)
Well, it takes time to simply think through a problem and come up with an idea, and that's generally something only one mind can do at a time. So you'd need them to live long enough for the best minds to be able to come up with ideas and theories and explain them to the others before they die. Then the others need to live long enough to understand those ideas, elaborate on them, and implement them, and teach the more advanced versions to the next generation, etc. The smaller the life span, the less information one has time to absorb over one's lifetime, and the less they can contribute. I think at the relatively early stages of development the Keidran are at now, it's probably not a problem, but it could pose a limit if they were to ever try to industrialize.

...did that make any sense? My vision's going blurry from wont of sleep...
Don't worry, that made pefect sense to me. :)

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Re: Magic and Technology

#68 Post by coal »

supervanman64 wrote:
Sebbie wrote:
WindDragon wrote:I'd like to think that since Keidran age through generations faster than humans, they'd advance a little bit quicker, but maybe they just don't have enough time to develop technology before they die? (you know, in between the lovin's)
Well, it takes time to simply think through a problem and come up with an idea, and that's generally something only one mind can do at a time. So you'd need them to live long enough for the best minds to be able to come up with ideas and theories and explain them to the others before they die. Then the others need to live long enough to understand those ideas, elaborate on them, and implement them, and teach the more advanced versions to the next generation, etc. The smaller the life span, the less information one has time to absorb over one's lifetime, and the less they can contribute. I think at the relatively early stages of development the Keidran are at now, it's probably not a problem, but it could pose a limit if they were to ever try to industrialize.

...did that make any sense? My vision's going blurry from wont of sleep...
Don't worry, that made pefect sense to me. :)
Actually that made alota sense, I like this theory! :grin:

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Re: Magic and Technology

#69 Post by Sebbie »

coal wrote:Actually that made alota sense, I like this theory! :grin:
It comes from personal experience; supposedly in math and science, you make your best contributions in your early twenties, and here I am a month away from turning 21 and I look at how much more physics I still have to learn before I can start contributing (to theory, anyway) and I'm like "AM I BRILLIANT YET!?"

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Re: Magic and Technology

#70 Post by WindDragon »

Sebbie wrote:
WindDragon wrote:I'd like to think that since Keidran age through generations faster than humans, they'd advance a little bit quicker, but maybe they just don't have enough time to develop technology before they die? (you know, in between the lovin's)
Well, it takes time to simply think through a problem and come up with an idea, and that's generally something only one mind can do at a time. So you'd need them to live long enough for the best minds to be able to come up with ideas and theories and explain them to the others before they die. Then the others need to live long enough to understand those ideas, elaborate on them, and implement them, and teach the more advanced versions to the next generation, etc. The smaller the life span, the less information one has time to absorb over one's lifetime, and the less they can contribute. I think at the relatively early stages of development the Keidran are at now, it's probably not a problem, but it could pose a limit if they were to ever try to industrialize.

...did that make any sense? My vision's going blurry from wont of sleep...
Possibly...I don't know. I just watched a rerun of StarGate SG-1, the episode where an entire civilization was altered so that they aged at a rate of ~1 year/day. The reasoning behind it was that they wanted to see how humans would develop over time, without having to wait that long.

I know that I year per day is way to short of a time, but 20 years is much longer than than that. And considering they have about 8 years of maturity...that's a nice bit of time right there. If knowledge is passed down to the next generation for them to build upon, then technology can be created. HOWEVER, I do not remember much education occurring within the Keidran community. In fact, a good portion of them are slaves...who are uneducated as Keith pointed out back on the ship...
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Re: Magic and Technology

#71 Post by Sebbie »

WindDragon wrote:If knowledge is passed down to the next generation for them to build upon, then technology can be created. HOWEVER, I do not remember much education occurring within the Keidran community. In fact, a good portion of them are slaves...who are uneducated as Keith pointed out back on the ship...[/color]
It can now, when there's almost nothing currently in existence. But what if they were to reach the level of technology of, say, our current civilization? Think about the amount of education we require from our scientists before they can start contributing; twelve years of primary, four for a Bachelor's, then three to six for grad school. We graduate from grad school in our mid-twenties, by which point a Keidran would be long gone. Even if the Keidran were to shorten the education system and make it more efficient, they'd still only be "experts" in whatever field near the ends of their lives, when the brain has lost its youthful creativity. I'm not suggesting their life span poses a limit now, just that it poses an inherent limit as to how advanced they can get.

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Re: Magic and Technology

#72 Post by WindDragon »

Also depends on how fast they are able to grasp that knowledge...you know in the past (I read this in history class...) it stated that illiterate communities were able to memorize entire stories which could be several hours/days long) word for word. I don't know about you guys, but I don't think I would be able to possibly do that EVER. Then, there was the case of a man is the Middle East (also in history...) who by the age of 16, had learned almost every subject/science to date, and could recite Aristotle by heart. If humans can do this, what about Keidran. I know that at this point, Keidran have no need to really go into deep study, but if they could, they could probably do so in less time then that...<.<
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Re: Magic and Technology

#73 Post by Sebbie »

WindDragon wrote:Also depends on how fast they are able to grasp that knowledge...you know in the past (I read this in history class...) it stated that illiterate communities were able to memorize entire stories which could be several hours/days long) word for word. I don't know about you guys, but I don't think I would be able to possibly do that EVER. Then, there was the case of a man is the Middle East (also in history...) who by the age of 16, had learned almost every subject/science to date, and could recite Aristotle by heart. If humans can do this, what about Keidran. I know that at this point, Keidran have no need to really go into deep study, but if they could, they could probably do so in less time then that...<.<
The most famous example in Western history is Homer: the Iliad and the Odyssey weren't originally books, they were epic poems that Homer went around reciting to people. Same thing in many Native American cultures, who didn't have a written language.

As for the Middle Eastern man, there are still people today who can do things like. Savants, for example, can memorize every page in a phone book by leafing through it; there's one who can learn a new language in a day, another who's memorized the digits of pi to some thousands of decimal places, etc. There are two things to note here. First, these people are not ordinary people; they have brain disorders (some minor, some major) which allow them to store incredible amounts of information, but they can't reason with it. Second, storing information is completely different from processing it and using it to create new ideas. I mean, look at the internet: it's contains far more information than any human could remember, and yet it doesn't spit out new scientific theories or whatnot. That's because it can't think; storing information is useless without the means to process it. The point is, it's not about just memorizing information, it's about learning it, thinking about it, and then using it to create new ideas. That's much more difficult than just remembering it, and takes much more time. Even if the Keidran could memorize absurdly huge amounts of information, there'd be no point without the ability to think and reason about it.

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Re: Magic and Technology

#74 Post by WindDragon »

Note: The Middle Eastern Man read Aristotle 40 frickin' times before he was able to fully grasp the concept. And according to my history teacher, it was the social norm to be able to fully memorize texts like this. The next step up was the ability to understand them. The step above that was being able to actually apply those skills. Although being as capable as this man was is rare in any case, it wasn't as rare for a person to become fluent in one subject/field. In fact, most of the wealthy classes were all educated in this way.

Even in today's time, if we look at the population as a whole, only about 1% of people go to college...get a degree in whatever field......but look at how far we have advanced.
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Re: Magic and Technology

#75 Post by Sebbie »

WindDragon wrote:Note: The Middle Eastern Man read Aristotle 40 frickin' times before he was able to fully grasp the concept. And according to my history teacher, it was the social norm to be able to fully memorize texts like this. The next step up was the ability to understand them. The step above that was being able to actually apply those skills. Although being as capable as this man was is rare in any case, it wasn't as rare for a person to become fluent in one subject/field. In fact, most of the wealthy classes were all educated in this way.

Even in today's time, if we look at the population as a whole, only about 1% of people go to college...get a degree in whatever field......but look at how far we have advanced.
Yes, but the point is that he was 16 when he did that, which for Keidran would already be approaching old age. He was almost certainly an exception; I would imagine even if memorization/understanding/application were the standard of education, the average person would be in his/her twenties by the time they mastered a field, which, as I said, would not work out to well for Keidran. Besides, from what I've seen, in the more technical fields that most contribute to technological advancement, brute memorization is rarely useful, and often detrimental. I don't know who this Middle Eastern guy was, but I'm gonna guess that he was reading Aristotle for his philosophy, not science.

It's true that not everyone goes to college (although 1% seems like too low a percentage; did you mean graduate school?), but who have been the leaders of technological advancement? Mainly well-educated people specialized in their respective fields. Certainly it's not impossible to start a technological revolution without a college education -- people like to mention Bill Gates whenever the issue of college education comes up -- but if we were to study the statistics of it, the vast majority of technological innovators would indeed be those that went to college to pursue a specialization.

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