The Roman Empire

[AllentownJake]

Human beings weren't any more intelligent during the Roman Empire. Look at some of the structures the Roman's designed the aqueducts etc. There were inventors who had designs for the preliminary of the Steam Engine, Electricity, the Battery, etc. However they were considered toys because Slavery was perfectly acceptable and the elites did not need the toys to be comfortable. Plus the slavery and economy they had developed kept them wealthy.

Are we in a similar situation today with our elites not needing the next wave of innovation to stay wealthy or even worse the next wave threatens their status? Are they killing things to prevent themselves from losing their status?

Just a deep thought I had.

[Selatius]

1. In economics, you learn that monopolies pretty quickly try to stifle innovation.

If a company gained a monopoly in a certain market, it would try to squelch any upstarts using its position to undercut the upstart. The same can be said if an upstart invents a new product that may potentially make obsolete the monopoly's current market. If you owned all the telegraph infrastructure in the 1800s, you would view as a threat the invention of the telephone. You may attempt to buy the invention off the inventor and then simply sit on it rather than go through the expensive hassle of trying to market it and deploy it. Why do that when you can be lazy and sit on the paychecks that come in off the existing infrastructure?

At that point, you don't have a functioning market anymore with healthy competition. You simply have an economy that bares more resemblance to feudalism, except with modern technology and machines instead of slaves. A few would be rich. The great many would be poor. It would be like Rome as far as wealth inequality goes or modern day Mexico or Brazil.

[mainer]

2. More frightening? It all disappeared into the Dark Ages.

After the amazing innovations by the Romans, the world seemed to descend into an era without sewage systems or clean water or all the wonderful architectural advancements of Roman engineers. What I learned, while traveling in Greece and Turkey, was how quickly civilization can devolve. It could happen again. Right now, we enjoy our modern transportation systems. All it takes is a century of war and chaos, and it could all vanish.

[NYC_SKP]

3. Yes and no.

The powerful, then and now, want to keep a large poor ignorant working class, true.

Given time, I think the Romans would have developed steam, electricity, etc., but they didn't last long enough to.

I don't think those technologies were suppressed then.

I do think some technologies are suppressed and/or carefully "managed" now, however.

[AllentownJake]

4. I don't think they were actively suppressed

However, due to the elites comfort and desire for society, I don't think the concept on how the technology could be used was ever thought.

Why do you need a steam engine if you have 100 slaves to do the work for you.

Why do you need a printing press when you don't want mass dissemination of information. You've trained a few of your smarter slaves to read and write and keep books for you. The rest don't need to read anything.

[Selatius]

5. There was a Greco-Roman philosopher who invented a primitive steam engine.

Sadly, I've forgotten his name. It was merely a hollow sphere suspended on a pole. It was filled with water, closed up again, and then heated over a fire. The sphere had a little tube that came out and then bent sideways. The steam would jet through the tube causing the sphere to spin around on its axis. The jet of steam propelled the sphere. It was a demonstration of mechanical motion through steam power.

The only reason it didn't become anything more than a sideshow or a cheap trick was there was no market for mass transport of people, but there was for movement of goods. Steam engines could be used to ferry many tons of goods from one place to another, but in those days, where entire nations fell before the Roman military machine, many slaves in the conquered territories were taken, tens of thousands of them. Those who were submissive were, in time, assimilated into the Roman Empire and given citizenship. Those who resisted face slavery. The slaves were used in place of machines to do work, to move around goods, etc. And most folks were tied down to the land as farmers. Others were artisans who used the local resources to do things like make dinnerware and pottery, sew clothes for people, fix broken wagons, etc. To be sure, the Romans invented great machinery to do heavy work, but they often required a crew of people to operate, especially when it came to lifting heavy blocks to make buildings, bridges, etc. No steam engine or combustion engine was used.

They could've had those things if there was capital provided to the inventors of the era, and they had some gifted inventors in the Greco-Roman world as well as the Arab world in those centuries.

[csziggy]

13. Some of the most ingenuous automatons crafts by Greeks were used for temple "magiks"

A machine that dispensed wine, machines that put on shows with no apparent human intervention, etc. were built by Heron of Alexandria:

Known as Michanikos, the Machine Man, Heron invented the world's first steam engine, developed some sophisticated surveying tools, and crafted handy gizmos like a self-trimming oil lamp. Technically speaking, Heron's clever inventions were particularly notable for their incorporation of the sorts of self-regulating feedback control systems that form the bedrock of cybernetics; like today's toilets, his "inexhaustible goblet" regulated its own level with a floating mechanism. But what really stirred Heron's soul were novelties: pneumatic gadgets, automata, and magic theaters, one of which rolled itself before the audience on its own power, cranked through a miniature three-dimensional performance, and then made its own exit. Another staged a Dionysian mystery rite with Apollonian precision: Flames lept, thunder crashed, and miniature female Bacchantes whirled madly around the wine god on a pulley-driven turntable.
Erik Davis - Techgnosis: Myth, Magic & Mysticism In The Age Of Information
http://www.mlahanas.de/Greeks/HeronAlexandria.htm

[csziggy]

14. Heron of Alexandria built many ingenious devices

Known as Michanikos, the Machine Man, Heron invented the world's first steam engine, developed some sophisticated surveying tools, and crafted handy gizmos like a self-trimming oil lamp. Technically speaking, Heron's clever inventions were particularly notable for their incorporation of the sorts of self-regulating feedback control systems that form the bedrock of cybernetics; like today's toilets, his "inexhaustible goblet" regulated its own level with a floating mechanism. But what really stirred Heron's soul were novelties: pneumatic gadgets, automata, and magic theaters, one of which rolled itself before the audience on its own power, cranked through a miniature three-dimensional performance, and then made its own exit. Another staged a Dionysian mystery rite with Apollonian precision: Flames lept, thunder crashed, and miniature female Bacchantes whirled madly around the wine god on a pulley-driven turntable.
Erik Davis - Techgnosis: Myth, Magic & Mysticism In The Age Of Information
http://www.mlahanas.de/Greeks/HeronAlexandria.htm

[NYC_SKP]

7. I see. Technological complacency. OK, there may be some of that today.

As well as the deliberate suppression thing.

[Strelnikov_]

6. It has happened before. It will happen again.

As our fifth strand, we have to wonder why the kings and nobles failed to recognize and solve these seemingly obvious problems undermining their society. Their attention was evidently focused on their short-term concerns of enriching themselves, waging wars, erecting monuments, competing with each other, and extracting enough food from the human peasants to support all those activities. Like most leaders throughout human history, the Maya kings and nobles did not heed long-term problems, insofar as they perceived them.

. . .

Like Easter Island chiefs erecting ever larger statues, eventually crowned by pukao, and like Anasazi elites treating themselves to necklaces of 2000 turquoise beads, Maya kings sought to outdo each other with more and more impressive temples, covered with thicker and thicker plaster, reminiscent in turn of the extravagant conspicuous consumption by modern American CEO's. The passivity of Easter chiefs and Maya kings in the face of the real big threats to their societies completes our list of disquieting parallels.

Chapt. 5, 'The Maya Collapses', from 'Collapse: How Societies Choose To Fail Or Succeed’ by Jared Diamond

[SpiralHawk]

12. Jared Diamond's formula for collapse

One of the most cogent explorations of the urgency we confront is Jared Diamond’s book, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed. He describes the environmental causes leading to failed societies, and compares them with societies that have succeeded. In doing so he arrives at a blunt formula: Environmental crisis + failure of society to address = societal collapse.

[AngryAmish]

8. People are a lot smarter now then than

Nutrition is much better. Most people have been taught to read and some math.

The situation you describe is the Dominican Republic, not the USA.

[AllentownJake]

9. They choose what you read

The German population prior to WWII is very well educated and in order to operate the machines you need to know how to read.

They control the information. This internet thing is a thorn in their side, however, they are working on that.

[AngryAmish]

10. Who chooses what I read? The American Pornography Council?

Did you listen to "Fresh Air" today? You might benefit from the first segment.

[AllentownJake]

11. Most people get their news from

either a news paper, the nightly news, or a cable TV news station.

They choose what they cover...remember the anti-war protests? Now think about the TEA Parties.

[Cresent City Kid]

15. I'm reading something that may apply here

Future Shock author Alvin Toffler wrote a book in 1980 called The Third Wave. His use of a wave analogy is interesting. Agriculture is the first wave, the industrial revolution was the second, and what we are going through now is the front of the third wave hitting as the second loses steam. He believed that elites would fight to keep the past the way it was, as futile as fighting over the deckchairs on the Titanic, as he put it. He makes sense even though he overestimates how quickly we will embrace the future, and underestimates the internet in a quaint way.

As far as the Romans squashing an industrial revolution, it's an intriguing thought, but I'm not sure. Looking back it's easy to see the connection between steam and electric machines and progress. I don't know if they connected the dots, saw the potential and sat on the technology. I'm only speculating, but I think they would have taken advantage of it and found a way to profit.

[AllentownJake]

16. Christianity

Not churches, Christianity. People read their New Testaments and took certain parts seriously. Slavery and abusing people seemed to conflict with the book when they read it. There is a strong reason the Northeast is more progressive. Mainline Protestant churches that focused on the New Testament.

The South focused on the old Testament because it allowed them to justify keeping their slaves.

You didn't need Machines in Rome because you had slaves. I'm sure if a military application could have been theorized it would have taken off as it would have allowed them to easily crush the areas they wished to conquer.

[Cresent City Kid]

17. You're right about the military machines

No "would have" necessary, the Romans pushed military technology to the limit. I also agree that they didn't feel the need for machines when slavery worked for them. The question is did it occur to them that machines could replace slaves, and if so did they inhibit technology deliberately? I have no way of knowing, I'm guessing they didn't. I'm more convinced that social progress is being stifled today to keep our economic class system, wage slavery, intact.

[AllentownJake]

18. Social Issues are purposely pushed to keep people distracted

For 100 years it was racism.

For the past 30 years it has been abortion.

The Last 20 years it has also been Gay Rights.


God has been used as the biggest wedge issue to oppress the poor.

Constantine wasn't no dummy he took a Religion that was based on standing up to authority no matter what the cost and turned it into a Religion based on standing for authority no matter what the cost.

Using God is brilliant. All logical and reasoned answers can be tossed out the window because a deity has taken a stance on the issue. Promising people a better life in the next world is the best way to ensure they don't demand one in the current world.