Oddities

An Insomniac’s Journal

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I have this problem.  About every other week, I’ll go without sleep for a night.  I end up being a zombie the next day, giving jerks like Adam a chance to continually zing me in my weakened mental state.  Usually, it’s caused by some thought experiment, as was the case with last night.  This article is about what I thought about, when I should have been sleeping.  Writing it is also helping to keep me awake at work.  First, let me provide the backdrop. 

I watched this series on ancient Greece, right before bed.  It was better than the average show about the ancient world.  I’d rate it a 4.5 out of 5.  Focus wasn’t placed as much on war and bloodshed, as it was on invention, culture and philosophy.  The show ended and all was well, until I lay there, thinking about it.  Then, the going back in time fantasy hit me.  If I could go back to ancient Greece, what would I do?  I decided to create the industrial revolution 2,000 early. 

Phase 1: Acclimate

To start, I would have to learn the language.  I couldn’t communicate complex ideas by drawing pictures in the dirt and even if I could, no one would listen to some big, jabbering foreigner.  I had to speak Greek.  This would take years to learn the full language, with all its slang and nuances.  That would require a profession, so I could have the essentials.  The only problem with that is, I have no useful skills that would apply to the ancient world.  The magic is in my brain and it’s locked there, until I learn to effectively communicate.  I would need a job that would allow me listen to normal conversation, constantly.  I settled for working in the Agora as a laborer.  The job would be hard, but it satisfied my needs.

Phase 2: Network

After I learned the language, I couldn’t just walk up to the Archon and start giving him some fantastic story of time travel or being sent by the gods.  I’d either be killed or exiled for madness.  I would have to form close relationships with skilled artisans and scholars.  By this time, I’d be a poor, filthy, skinny laborer and a foreigner to boot.  I’d be seen as subhuman.  The only people that would give me the time of day would be the philosophers.  I would begin with them.  I would dazzle them with hypotheticals and stories.  I would slowly gain recognition as an interesting figure.  From that recognition, I would gain access to more affluent people, namely skilled artisans. 

I would intrigue the artisans with fantastic ideas that were attainable to them, the windmill, distilled liquor, blown glass, gunpowder.  Gunpowder would be the toughest.  You can explain charcoal and sulfur, but potassium nitrate would be a different matter.  I’d have to show them how to make it.  Good thing I read the Anarchists’ Cookbook.  With gunpowder, I’d befriend an especially talented artisan.  With his help and a little trial and error, we’d create the first bronze cannon and present it to the Archon.

Phase 3:  Produce

Athens already had a sizeable navy, so the cannon would easily have made them the regional hegemon.  I would place myself in the service of Athens, under the Archon, with the promise of more wonders.  I would request a large workshop and open it to the greatest scholars and artisans of the time.  I’m going to need them.

Phase 4: Teach

We all like to think we’re so smart today.  We have cell phones, microwaves, cars and televisions, right?  With that in mind, make any of those.  More than likely, it wouldn’t happen.  You’ll need some help.  The ancients weren’t stupid, they just didn’t have our body of knowledge, to build upon.  That’s where I come in.  Here are the areas I would focus on:

Metallurgy – The Bellows, Iron Smelting, Cast Molding, the Blast Furnace, Steel

Chemistry – Concrete, Pitch Refinement, Coke (from Coal)

Medicine – Hygiene, Sterilization/Pasteurization, Vaccination, Penicillin, Vitamins

Electricity – The Battery,  Copper Wire, the Electric Generator, Electromagnetism, the Telegraph, the Light Bulb

Martial Arts – Unit Specialization, Advanced Subterfuge, Special Tactics, Marksmanship

Engineering – The Arch, Plumbing, the Aqueduct, Mining, the Steam Engine, the Locomotive, Interchangeable Parts, the Combustion Engine

Now, why did I choose these?  I first thought of the outcome and worked my way backward.  If I wanted steel, I needed a blast furnace.  If I wanted a blast furnace, I needed compressed air and coke.  I would supply those with the bellows and mining.  So forth and so on.

With a lot of these inventions, I’d need a large manpower pool to build, operate and gather resources for their use.  That would require a large amount of people to live in a small area.  One disease would kill a large portion of my workforce, so medicine became more important.  Additionally, there would not be enough local stone for their housing.  If I used huts and tents, disease again would become an issue, so concrete, plumbing and the arch would be needed.

Some of the explanations were easy, thanks to How It’s Made.  Copper wire can be made through a series of rolling presses.  Wrap the copper wire in a coil and spin a piece of lodestone in the center and you have electricity.  A piece of carbon filament connected to two leads, in a glass vacuum tube will give you a light bulb.  This line of thinking kept going on for hours, as I tried to recall basic concepts like how coke and cement are made.  I could treat animals, purposely infected, with different fungi, to find penicillin.

Off Course

As I continued through my thought experiment I realized that many of inventions and discoveries are made, because of the proper conditions (need, previous knowledge, materials) to allow the logical progression.  Thomas Edison didn’t create the light bulb, just for the hell of it.  There was a need.  Candles and lamp oil were expensive.  He was once quoted as saying, “We’ll make electricity so cheap that only the rich will burn candles.”  In addition to cost motivations, open flames in the home were dangerous.  There are various examples in history of our light sources contributing to the deaths of hundreds, if not thousands, including the tale of Mrs. O’Leary’s cow kicking over the lantern and starting the Great Chicago Fire.  The need, previous knowledge and materials were there for logical progress to occur.

Here is a full example of the logical progression in action:

Early man used stone axes.  If one broke, they’d just make another.  Eventually, someone found a hard green stone that was stronger than normal and made an axe out of it.  He left the axe too close to the fire and the next morning, his stone crumbled in his hand, but the stuff that was in the dying embers was harder than the green stone.  He tried it again with another green stone to see what happened and marveled at how it oozed from the stone, like blood.  After it cooled, it was hard again.  He remembered a time when he left a bowl of animal blood in the cold and it was hard, like the strange stone.  What if the bowl was shaped like an axe? 

- If he didn’t need a harder axe, there would be no reason to pursue it further. 

- His previous knowledge aided in casting the copper axe.

- Without the green rock, he wouldn’t have the copper axe.  He’d just continue in ignorant bliss with the inferior stone axe.

The Future

This line of thinking brought to mind Jules Verne.  His stories contained some of the most accurate predictions of the future of any other author.  Some treat him as some kind of science fiction prophet.  What if he thought about rebuilding the past, constantly?  Honing this logical progression in this mind, then continued to the present day and beyond.  

With this new knowledge, let’s apply the logical progression to an important issue concerning the human race, feeding masses in an overcrowded future, leaving less room for agriculture. 

First off, you can kiss your steak, chicken breast and pork chop goodbye.  Deriving protein from animal flesh is incredibly wasteful.  Growing soybeans is a better alternative for protein.  Pound for pound, tofu contains twice the protein as steak. 

That would work for a while, but as the population continued to increase, there would be even less room for crops.  The ocean would be our last alternative.  It’s my guess that every major ecosystem would be destroyed by this time, so fishing is out of the question.  We could try farming on the ocean, but that would be too resource intensive to support the whole of humanity.  Kelp would be an excellent source of energy, but it won’t put meat on your bones.  The answer it there, just give it a second.

- What form of life relies on no other in the ocean?

- It can be easily skimmed off the top.

- It can be seeded from a passing airplane.

- It grows quickly.

The answer is plankton.  The ocean covers 70% of the earth.  Plankton grows everywhere.  It can be seeded, grown and skimmed by giant whale-like harvesting ships.  The future diet of humanity will consist of plankton, smooshed together to look and taste like normal food, whatever that will be, by then.

That was where I was at, around hour 5.  I’m tired of writing about it.  I left out a lot of the details, because it would be a short novel.  Now, you have a sample of what goes through the mind of an insomniac.  I started by technologically advancing the ancient world and ended up saving future humanity from starvation. 

You’re welcome.