Technological Advancement

[Androxine Vortex]

So in many fantasy stories centuries and thousands of years can go by but still cultures are locked in a medieval theme. How have you handled this in your works? How can you justify this by still being believable?

 

[X Equestris]

Personally, I haven't even tried to do Medieval Stasis. My civilizations have had significant technological progress in the past, moving from stone tools/weapons and armor to bronze, then iron and steel. The current era, roughly corresponding to the real world Dark Ages and then Middle Ages, is a little under a thousand years long so far. During that time, technology has changed. There are some differences: full plate armor hasn't really been developed yet, but the printing press and very basic telescopes have been. One civilization far in the north has gunpowder, used only in cannons right now, and guards it very closely. Borders have fluctuated, some social structures have changed, some countries have been totally absorbed by others, etc. I'm trying to give the impression of change.

I'm not sure how one provide a believable justification for keeping their world in a medieval state for millenia. Perhaps having some sort of outside force that destroys any civilization that progresses past it. That's all I can think of at the moment.

 

[ThinkerX]

I don't go that route, myself.

In real world history, though, it comes down to slavery, or effective slavery (serfdom). Lots and lots of work required to keep the wheels of ancient/medieval civilization turning. Ancient societies relied on slaves to do much of that work. These societies tended to be highly socially stratified. Those at the top of the heap counted slaves as part of their wealth. Run up a debt? Take out a loan against a few dozen prime slaves. ANYTHING that threatens the value of slaves cannot be tolerated in such a society. Technology is right at the top of the forbidden list, along with anything close to universal education.

In my worlds, society is in flux. A steady stream of inventions and programs is changing things. Former legionaries are being offered citizenship and a plots of land in the aftermath of a prolonged war, causing the middle class to expand five fold. More and more kids are attending basic level church or guild schools, for basic literacy and math skills. Signal towers relay news across thousands of miles in days, instead of months or even years. Printing presses, once a monopoly of Church and State, are spreading beyond those institutions. Bicycles are exploding in popularity, along with mechanical farm equipment (still primitive by todays standards, but a order of magnitude improvement compared to the old system.) And so on. And yes, these innovations are bitterly opposed by the old order, almost to the point of civil war.

 

[WooHooMan]

I don't think I've ever had that problem. I think when a story calls for "a long time", many writers jump to 1,000 years. This is probably to add some sense of grandeur to whatever they're talking about. Who knows?
I usually don't go more than a century in the past. I've rarely needed to go further and when I do, I tend to remember progression. Like, I've had stories that explicitly said that people were speaking historical forms of languages in the past rather than the modern spoken language. When you get it in your mind that everything changes over the centuries - be it technological or cultural - you just kind of naturally teach yourself to avoid the cultural stagnation problem.

How can you justify this? Well, why didn't they have written language in Polynesia until medieval times? Or why didn't Native Americans have guns until the Europeans arrived? Some cultures just don't "progress" the way others do. In terms of technology, it could just be a matter of not having the need or materials they need to build whatever.

 

[Penpilot]

Advancement in technology is never guaranteed. Many things can hold back advancement like politics, religion, fear, philosophy, limited materials, etc. OR there just hasn't been a intellectual spark that will allow technology to push beyond a certain level.

Look in our world. China's first dynasty emerged in around 2100 BCE, and between that time and the beginning of the common era, they never reached the moon or developed the microchip. They made advancements in Mathematics, astronomy, even gun powder and etc., but they weren't ever able to move into combustion engines.

I wonder if our modern world could have come about if the printing press wasn't invented. This made the dissemination of knowledge through books cheaper and easier. Instead of having one person copy a book by hand, they could run off many copies in a fraction of the time.

If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.

 

[psychotick]

Hi,

I'm going to have to agree with Penpilot - do we need to justify it at all. The Chinese had gunpowder thousands of years ago - writing too as well as paper and many other advances. They didn't really progress it to an advance society. Steel's been around in the west for several millenia, the bronze age began 3,500 BC. But the Industrial revolution didn't happen until three or four centuries ago.

Progress in technological advancement is slow. By and large it happens in incremental steps, with every so often a big leap being made. But so many cultures on Earth never made those leaps for any number of reasons. Scarcity of resources. Lack of patronage of the technologist's art. Or someone just didn't have that spark of genius.

Why do you have to explain that something didn't happen?

Cheers, Greg.

 

[X Equestris]

Hi,

I'm going to have to agree with Penpilot - do we need to justify it at all. The Chinese had gunpowder thousands of years ago - writing too as well as paper and many other advances. They didn't really progress it to an advance society. Steel's been around in the west for several millenia, the bronze age began 3,500 BC. But the Industrial revolution didn't happen until three or four centuries ago.

Progress in technological advancement is slow. By and large it happens in incremental steps, with every so often a big leap being made. But so many cultures on Earth never made those leaps for any number of reasons. Scarcity of resources. Lack of patronage of the technologist's art. Or someone just didn't have that spark of genius.

Why do you have to explain that something didn't happen?

Cheers, Greg.

The Chinese developed gunpowder in the 9th century. Hardly thousands of years.

It's one thing to have a few cultures locked in technological stasis because of various factors. It's another for the whole world to be locked in place for thousands of years. Having that occur strains believability.

 

[Feo Takahari]

The Japanese solution seems to be regular apocalypses. Final Fantasy, Etrian Odyssey, Golden Sun . . . The world always had fantastical technology before they invented something so dangerous it destroyed their entire civilization. (Golden Sun does particularly well with this. All their technology was based on magic, so when magic was sealed away as a danger to the human race, it was inevitable that society would decay and roll backwards.)

 

[Brian Scott Allen]

The Wheel of Time also had the destruction thing as a theme. As for me, no I let my societies progress. It makes sense. Granted the progression isn't the same as on Earth but I still let them advance.

 

[johnsonjoshuak]

The world that I'm currently working in has a technology level roughly equivalent to the 19th Century. ranging from late muskets and early rifles in one part of the world, rudimentary steam ships in another, and late rifles leading into repeating rifles in a third area.

I definitely wanted to avoid the medieval stasis and it seems that there are other writers of the same mind as the Gunpowder Fantasy sub-genre has started to gather some steam (pun intended...)

 

[CupofJoe]

I don't know of any stories where all change has stopped... [someone will no doubt enlighten me]
It might just be that [even at a thousand years] the time-scale of change is not obvious within the story.

[Terry Pratchett's last few books have been exactly the opposite, that moment when something new [Railways, Money, "Human" rights etc.] kicks over the status quo and a new world emerges, that is still remarkable like the old one]

For a lot of people and times the old adage "If it ain't broke don't fix it" holds true.
Change only come around when it leads to an advantage.
If you can grow enough food to feed yourself and your family and pay your taxes and have a little to put away for a rainy day, then why would you try something knew?
But subtle refinements would be taking place, saving the best seed for next years crops, making the handle of X a little longer/shorter... We might not notice them but those in that world will.
Throw in a repressive over-Lord/Lady, invasion by monsters or a plague or two and see how fast stasis dissolves and change occurs.

 

[psychotick]

Hi X,

But only one culture in all of Earth's history developed beyond the medieval. All progress throughout the rest of the world is based on them spreading their wings and their technology. So where would we be now if Europe hadn't gone through an industrial revolution? And all that had to happen was for a few discoveries not to happen. If they hadn't happened in that one culture would it be beyond believability that that the medieval state would still be the most advanced technological society on Earth?

Cheers, Greg.

 

[Mindfire]

I start to wince when people throw out terms like "technological advancement", simply because I took a culture studies class that taught me to think about things differently. We often think about technology as developing along a linear (or exponential if you want to get fancy) curve, following the general pattern of the Western world. We're at the top, therefore advanced. Any society lower than us on the curve is considered primitive. But this is an extremely Eurocentric, superficial, materialistic, and ultimately inadequate way of thinking about social change that has even been used to justify slavery and racism. It also ignores tons of factors from differing values and mores, to resources or the lack thereof, to interactions with other cultures hostile or benevolent. Different cultures have different priorities and develop differently. Just because they go a certain amount of time without inventing X technology doesn't mean they're underdeveloped or stagnant. It just means that, for any number of reasons, they're not following the Western model. And that's fine.

As for invented cultures, you can avoid the cliches that come with a medieval stasis world without following the Western model of development. And that's probably the most interesting path because our largely Eurocentric fantasy genre hasn't done it much. Make your cultures sufficiently non-European in their values and philosophies and you can get interesting results. To say nothing of magic. My world only has two nations patterned after the Western model. Everyone else is some shade of non-Western.

 

[Russ]

While I am all for non-materialistic advancements and valuing other cultures...the three field system does produce more crops consistently, stirrups do make it easier to ride a horse and the printing press does make mass literacy much more likely.

The human mind does like to improve and enhance things. If there is a culture that does not show technological advancement over time, I think your world needs an explanation for that. Even the period that used to be called "the dark ages" had significant technological and scientific advances.

 

[Mindfire]

While I am all for non-materialistic advancements and valuing other cultures...the three field system does produce more crops consistently, stirrups do make it easier to ride a horse and the printing press does make mass literacy much more likely.

The human mind does like to improve and enhance things. If there is a culture that does not show technological advancement over time, I think your world needs an explanation for that. Even the period that used to be called "the dark ages" had significant technological and scientific advances.

I'm afraid you've rather missed my point. What good is the three-field system to a non-agricultural society? What use is the stirrup to a society without horses? And why would a printing press be needed by a society that relies primarily on some variety non-written communication? Any given problem typically has multiple solutions, and different societies with different values will arrive at different answers. And that's assuming they even have the same problems and questions as our Western societies do, which they might not. All I'm saying is, this is fantasy. We can think outside the box. Cultures will change over time, there's no doubt about that. But they don't have to change in the same ways that Europeans, or any Earth culture for that matter, did. Especially since magic is a thing and can make a multitude of technologies unnecessary. Would a race of eidetic telepaths ever conceive of writing anything down? What use does a race of natural pyrokinetics have for fossil fuels? What if a culture values knowledge, in the abstract, for its own sake rather than for its practical applications? Even your relatively high-technology societies may have completely different technologies than we do. With all the possibilities available in a fantasy universe, I see no reason to fall back on the tropes of Western Europe.

 

[Russ]

I'm afraid you've rather missed my point. What good is the three-field system to a non-agricultural society? What use is the stirrup to a society without horses? And why would a printing press be needed by a society that relies primarily on some variety non-written communication? Any given problem typically has multiple solutions, and different societies with different values will arrive at different answers. And that's assuming they even have the same problems and questions as our Western societies do, which they might not. All I'm saying is, this is fantasy. We can think outside the box. Cultures will change over time, there's no doubt about that. But they don't have to change in the same ways that Europeans, or any Earth culture for that matter, did. Especially since magic is a thing and can make a multitude of technologies unnecessary. Would a race of eidetic telepaths ever conceive of writing anything down? What use does a race of natural pyrokinetics have for fossil fuels? What if a culture values knowledge, in the abstract, for its own sake rather than for its practical applications? Even your relatively high-technology societies may have completely different technologies than we do. With all the possibilities available in a fantasy universe, I see no reason to fall back on the tropes of Western Europe.

I hope I didn't miss your point, but I could have.

The initial question was "how do we explain these societies caught in technological stasis for centuries or longer"? My belief is that you need a darned good reason for it.

I still think that technological advance when the resources are available are a standard part of the human condition. I just used three examples that came easily to mind, but one of course can mix and match and tailor to taste. Your group of people who avoid writing things down (for whatever reason) might still want more crops so their children don't starve. The people who are not agriculturalists will still want better knowledge of how the seasons change to better predict where to obtain certain foods, or better tools for hunting or gathering. Pyrokinetics still need a fuel to burn so they might quite like fossil fuels that are lighter and more efficient and burn longer so they don't have to re-start their fire places every ten minutes. They also might want devices to better focus the heat, or to distribute it more evenly, or to make sure the smoke from the fire doesn't leave soot around the inside of their dwellings.

Technology is also a great force multiplier and result enhancer even when you really don't need a "thing" to achieve what you want. A human can get himself some basic stones and crush grains by hand, or he can throw a rock, no serious technology required. But despite that they tend to build water driven mills to do more of the same in a better way. Or he might sharpen that stone he throws or invent spears and bows. A man can see with his own eyes but a telescope or a microscope still allow him to see and learn much more, and that is without even talking about x-rays etc.

And the question of how one justifies a lack of advancement in technology in societies over centuries is not a eurocentric one. Virtually all societies develop technology at different paces and for different purposes. The Aztecs and Egyptians and Zimbabweans built some amazing structures without a wit of help from western europe through their own technological advances.

If a group of people has things they desire, or goals, they will seek ways to get those things more effectively and to achieve those goals. One of the ways of doing that is technology. I think if a society is stagnant in technology in a tale, no matter where set, or with what goals and abilities, you need a pretty strong story rationale for things being in technological stasis. No European bias involved at all. The same analysis to my mind would apply to any group of people no matter where they are in the world, or what special abilities they might have.

 

[X Equestris]

Hi X,

But only one culture in all of Earth's history developed beyond the medieval. All progress throughout the rest of the world is based on them spreading their wings and their technology. So where would we be now if Europe hadn't gone through an industrial revolution? And all that had to happen was for a few discoveries not to happen. If they hadn't happened in that one culture would it be beyond believability that that the medieval state would still be the most advanced technological society on Earth?

Cheers, Greg.

Factually incorrect. I'm not sure what you're calling "medieval" here. There was quite a bit of advancement in China, in India, and in the Middle East that--while not at an Industrial Revolution level--is beyond what most folks consider medieval.

 

[FifthView]

The question is a very good question and something I've had to think about in my current WIP.

The primary area of the world I'm using is the most advanced civilization on the planet and I've specifically chosen to make it an industrious, free-market society. At the same time, in its single religion and system of government, it is static & stable and has been for a couple thousand of years. There is a nearby continent (similar in distance to Europe-Africa) and a less advanced civilization of non-humans with whom there has been a constant state of low-level conflict (raiding by the non-humans); but otherwise, this society is geographically isolated and has not been involved in warfare since its foundation when there had been a civil war. Most cities don't even have walls, because of the lack of domestic and international warfare, the lack of extreme banditry from the countryside, and so forth. The stable nature of the society, the generally peaceful milieu, is extremely important for the story, and I've developed the origin and history of the society, including its geography, to support the viability of such a society.

So, I've wondered how there can be some advancements in production and technology and a generally free-market, industrious society that is quite stable, while at the same time not having the sort of progress that we've seen in our own world in Europe.

To some extent, the lack of warfare has retarded technological advancement, e.g., in the technology of warfare, but that's not enough to explain why the civilization is not more advanced.

Also, the fact that it is geographically isolated, having interaction with only the less-advanced non-humans (and no peaceful relations with them) has played a large role. Just look at how Europe's use of gunpowder required access/trade with China to develop, or how Europe imported scientific and mathematical advancements from the Arab-Muslim world. Quite often, advancement requires a type of "thinking outside the box" in the form of foreign discovery and subsequent importation.

Finally, the type of magic system I've devised, and its place in society, has made the "necessity is the mother of invention" factor less of a factor in the society.

On another more general note, I think we sometimes forget how technological advancement happens. Consider Leonardo da Vinci, who was brilliant and even designed devices that he hoped would allow flight — but he was not the Wright Brothers, alas. Probably, he was much more intelligent than the brothers (not a dig at them), but ultimately having no access to refined oil (gasoline) and internal combustion engines, etc., impeded da Vinci's development of a machine that would allow him to fly. Often, a whole society's development is required as a precursor for advancement, at least once early modernity is achieved. (E.g., systems of refineries, mass production, and so forth.) Then, even a "commoner" might make a discovery or invent a leap forward in technology. Without those things, much advancement will only come from isolated intellectuals — and only if they themselves have a stable life, i.e., access to wealth.

 

[DMThaane]

I think an important thing to remember here is how different cultural groups influence one another. The Chinese developed a printing system but it was only when when combined with the Latin alphabet that it could be used to mass produce books and open knowledge to a wider audience. Our modern science uses concepts from ancient Babylon developed and added to by Greece and Rome, developed and added to by the Islamic powers during their Golden Age, then developed and added to after being imported west. Our numerals are Indian, imported through the Islamic powers. Even our alphabet is a Latin development of a Greek development of the Phoenician alphabet. As a person of predominantly English descent I can hardly claim any of those three as 'my' people.

The knowledge that allowed the Industrial Revolution to happen only existed because of the influence of other cultures. Without the rich trade of ideas allowed by the Eurasian continent (with varying influence from Africa and later influences from America) the modern world simply wouldn't exist. I've read a few to many fantasy stories where the question on my mind wasn't 'why aren't these people more developed?' but 'how did these people develop at all with only a single cultural group on an entire continent?' That said, I was reading fantasy so I quickly brushed it off and went back to reading the book.

 

[Butterfly]

I remember reading a blog post on this very subject by Rachel Aaron. It's still around, and took me a bit of time to find it, but I found it.

Pretentious Title: Thoughts on Fantasy Empires

She has some interesting arguments against millenia of no change or advancement in empires. Worth a read.