Car engines today are based on the principle of burning fuel to create energy in the form of motion. But if our society was limited to materials like wood or stone, modern engines would simply not be possible. We would still be riding wooden bicycles and using canoes. This last point is particularly important. Since motorized travel will be impossible, water will be the most convenient and most efficient way to travel. Indeed, much of civilization would have congregated around bodies of water.
But we would still be able to accomplish much more than one might initially think. It is possible to carve gears and levers with a stone knife or something similar, allowing for construction of complicated machinery. Indeed, in a world where human civilization continued developing without the discovery of metal, we might be living in a "woodpunk" (taken after the word "steampunk") world -- with complicated wooden machinery buzzing all around us.
Returning to our starting point, look around you: metal everywhere. Without metal, we can accomplish so much yet so little. Indeed, removing such a staple in our life forces us to thing hard about living in a new situation, even a new planet in the future. So what other possibilities and impossibilities can you imagine in a world with no metal?
Without metal, I wouldn't really be typing up this comment. Well, we should've been able to discover metal at one point or another. Dmitri Mendeleev figured out some of the metals before they were discovered.
ReplyDeleteWe would evolve to a species that can live without metal if there was no metal.
There would be no wars; no hard alloys.
There wouldn't be any processing machines, or assembly lines.
There would be limited technology.
There would be a limited world.
But would this world really be so limited without even such a useful and necessary staple? That's the point of this post, to encourage the reader to question the necessity of standard things and procedures, and wonder if there is a different way to get things done. For everything that is well-known now was once on the forefront of discovery, and it is interesting to (or at least try to) think (please pardon the cliche) "think outside the box".
ReplyDeleteWhy do machines need metal? Sure, metal is more durable and more rigid, but maybe there is a way to create a machine differently than we are accustomed to. Is there?
Surely our modern idea of warfare is not the only kind there is. Wars may be fought differently, maybe not even by strength or firepower.
In the end, technology would not be limited, just different. And thinking about what technology would result, along with just how different it would have to be, is, I think, an interesting exercise in creativity. Forcing ourselves to see the world from an unfamiliar, even alien (as one can easily imagine metal not existing on a different planet), perspective allows us to see the hidden structure of things and to be more aware of the ideas floating in plain sight.
I'm sorry; when I think of these questions, I think of how it is impossible for the situation to occur in the first place.
ReplyDeleteThe majority of our Periodic Table of Elements is metals.
A wheel is technology.
Silicon nanowires is technology.
How can a computer be possible without metal?
Nickel-cored earth?
How much of the vital parts of human is composed of metal?