What Could Be! Should Be? Maybe? Or Possibly Not? Who Knows? Not I!

/ Dragons Claw

Hi everyone Just wanted before I start to say thanks to all my readers I’ve been going six weeks now have just hit 1500 views and getting towards 300 comments I’m absolutely blown away that soo many people have looked at my inane ramblings I was secretly suspicious it was all my mum trying to find out what I’m up too but no there’s this funky map thing deep in the gubbins of wordpress that shows where in the world I’m getting hits from and once again I’m blown away by the diversity obviously there’s a bias from English speaking countries but I’ve got hits from Venezeala (it only took me 3 goes to spell that right 🙂 ) Costa Rica, lots of hits from Germany and Russia too if you are reading from one of these places please dive in the comments I’d love to chat.

Yesterday was Old Stuff Day and in true contrary fashion I posted nothing what’s so ever I don’t think I’ve been going long enough to have old stuff and I was never a fan of the format I don’t want to read old stuff I want new stuff lazy ass bloggerss 🙂

Well what I did think I’d talk about today in an entirely random fashion and with no pretense of proper research or insight just me jabbering really was could 40k ever become a reality are we 38,000 so years from the grimdark darkness of total war alien invasion monolithic tyrannical empire run by uncaring beurocrats and theocrats. Well the short dull answer is probably not in 38000 years in all likelihood mankind will have been extinct for 10’s of thousands of years or evolved so far from us as to be unrecognisable but that’s boring and I make no pretense to rationality so let’s explore the concepts any way

So let’s start with Technology could mankind develop incredible wonders of engineering then forgot how and go on to worship the technological as something magical and spiritual. Well the sum of human knowledge now doubles every 5 years things I considered science fiction as a kid are now common place the smart phone most of you will have in your pockets have more than a passing resemblance to the tricorders of star trek fame. A computer the size of a book with a touchscreen the datatabs of 40k 20 odd years ago well I’m typing this on a tablet so there you go. I have no doubt that mankind is capable of bringing all the weaponry of the 40k universe to reality and with our depressingly warlike attitude probably will.

Genetically engineered super soldiers well we’ve made huge strides in genetic research we’ve maped the human genome and cloned sheep transplanted pigs hearts into humans and grown ears on the backs of mice so once again not beyond the bounds of reality

But Could this technological triumph be reversed and we slip into mysticism and worship whatvwe don’t understand the depressing fact is that this is surprisingly plausible. Let’s take the Dark ages into account When the Romans packed up and left Britain in 410AD we smashed up the plumbing and went back to shitting in the woods for 800 years until John Harrington came along and reinvented the toilet in 1596 (unfortunately it wasn’t Thomas Crapper in the late 18 hundreds) That’ll learn them bloody foreigners 🙂 .

Massive tyrannical Theocratic Beurocracy once again depressingly plausible The monolithic Beurocracy of the Russian Zsarist survives to this day despite 2 supposed revolutions firstly to communism then to democracy and retains a strong autocratic system.

Theocracies have thrived throughout history Irqn is still designated a theocratic republic by the CIA Saudi Arabia maintains religious police and courts Sudan Nigeria the Yemen all functioning modern day Theocracies closer to home Vatican City is ruled by the pope and the Catholic church there a war raging in the middle east as ISIL struggles to establish an Islamic state and in North Africa too.

Alien invaders we get to shaker ground here. However a shaky argument never stopped me from making it so It seems just on pure maths that were all alone in the universe any species that comes to dominate a world enough to devote the resources of a planet to interplanetary exploration is probably going to have an aggressive streak and will be looking for fresh resources so ocean again probable

Deamons and psykers well we do only use 10% of our minds so maybe but I’m gonna file that under hmmmm.

So do we have a conclusion sort of probably not but maybe I actually have a bit of faith in mankind that we will develop beyond that and it won’t be too grimdark but it’s fun to wonder

20 thoughts on “What Could Be! Should Be? Maybe? Or Possibly Not? Who Knows? Not I!”

  1. Yeah, those maps are pretty cool. There’s an island in the Indian Ocean called “Reunion” which just passed Italy on my Blog. Italians need to step up their game!!!

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  2. I was listening to a podcast a while back and this economics professor from Oxford had this theory that the loss of technology in the dark ages was an economic/infrastructure issue. He was saying how within twenty years of the Romans pulling out, there were no pottery wheels in the British Isles. Without the infrastructure of a taxation system, things broke down and it turned out that paying a specialist potter to make your pots was a luxury when you could dig up clay in your yard and make your own. Then the people who’s job it was to repair pots and other luxuries went out of business quick smart because they had to spend time making their own pots and growing their own veggies.

    His conclusion was that it seems as though technology is going to keep advancing forever, because it’s all we’ve ever known, but that it must have seemed that way to the Romano-British too. But technology doesn’t really come from research – it comes from a stable economy. He reckoned that if, say, the US collapsed economically and the rest of the western world followed suit, smart phones, tablets and a bunch of other things would be totally gone from general use in a couple of decades, if not sooner. It was very convincing.

    And a friend of mine once pointed out to me that yeah, things are advancing exponentially blah blah blah, but they aren’t really. Commercial luxury goods get slightly better each year so that people will keep buying new ones, but the basic tech we have – cars, phones, computers etc – has been the same for ages. Even antibiotics haven’t advanced appreciably since WWI.

    Not really about 40k, but I guess I just wanted to say that a new dark age is maybe not so unlikely as it seems. Maybe if we reached some sort of techno-singularity we’d be immune. But we aren’t there yet by a long shot.

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    • Hi James great comment and almost as long as my post 🙂

      Yeah incremental advances in technology are definitely a thing as is planned obsolescence and current invested interest stifling advancement ie we won’t see hydrogen powered vehicles due to the existing petrochemical infrastructure although I’m a big believer that the petrol age won’t end because we run out of petrol just as the stone, Iron and bronze ages didn’t end cause we ran out of stone iron or bronze something will come along so simple and effective that within a decade people will struggle to remember what came before.

      I saw this program on archeology that stated that it’s mostly known as the dark ages because it was a period of intense nomadic activity so archaeologically speaking there’s not a lot to find.

      Your definitely right about the need for a stable economy all innovation requires freedom from subsistence living. The other thing that worries me a little is the amount of knowledge we in the western world abdicate. We are essentially a consumer based economy and that’s are role. Very few things Are repaired just replaced. My grandfather could fix almost anything or if couldn’t one of a handful of his friends could. But today most people wouldn’t even attempt to repair a tv or a washing machine you just go out and buy another one or get another one on warranty. I think if you got a random 100 men from the post war period there would be very few jobs that they couldn’t accomplish I don’t think the result would be the same today.

      You also hear bits about a coming digital dark age where we won’t be able to read data due to obsolete formats which is plausible I mean how many Betamax video players can there be left in the world.

      I’m gonna go do some reading up on techno singularity now cause it’s a term I’ve never heard before 🙂

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      • Firstly: http://blast.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/Blast.cgi
        The main genome is mapped (we know how big the jigsaw is) we’re still figuring out what everything does (how the pieces interact). 14 years ago we thought that 99% of DNA in the Human genome was “junk”. How wrong we were! 😛

        As for what James said, it’s true we haven’t made any real leap in Anti-biotics. Hell, it wasn’t until very late last year that a new family of Anti-biotics was discovered O.o

        Secondly, congrats on all the views, comments and inane ramblings! Keep it up! 😀

        On the whole techno-dark age, it worries me somewhat as everyone’s pushing and pushing for more digital data and less physical hard copies. My older bro attended a similar seminar where the topic was that there’s the real world and the ‘digital’ world (sounds like digimon to me) but they’re in opposition:

        People are finding their virtual world (ie, facebook, etc) to be more important than say, driving safely to work. As such, it’s leading to more people absorbed by technology that reality is coming second.

        Tis scary stuff.

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      • I’m too old to be sucked into the digital world and I won’t touch my phone when driving although I’m a fucker for not wearing a seatbelt. But it is worrying how many stories do you hear about people driving into lakes and the like following there sat nav my steppie social life seems to be almost entirely digital which worries me a bit too

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  3. You’re in for a treat then. Singularity stuff ranges from pretty realistic (so what I said, that we reach a point where our tech sustains itself and we can’t go back), to people talking about Skynet scenarios and the assimilation of humanity into an AI. I went to a conference on it once when I was doing my PhD, there is some scary shit right there.

    I agree about the knowledge thing. I also think though that because we don’t see people working stuff out for themselves and demonstrating flexible thinking very often, we sort of think people can’t do it. Which is not true; adapting to difficult circumstances with our minds is the main evolutionary strategy of humans.

    It’s wealth that does it you know – my partner and I are very poor at the moment, and I’ve fixed our washing machine twice now because I had to. We couldn’t afford a new one or even to call a repair guy. And I do not think of myself as a handy man at all – I’m a fluff bunny creative type! But you gotta do what you gotta do. Most people can afford to just throw money at a problem like that. Repairing a washing machine is what, around 100 bucks? Most families can easily chuck that at such a vital problem. We would have been able to in the past, but not right now.

    When I was looking for work I was struck by the general attitude that if you haven’t been specifically trained in something or done it before, you won’t be able to easily do it. This is total BS. I’ve had a lot of jobs over the years and I’m sorry to break it to people, but if you need to, the average person can learn how to do anty job competently in about a week, give or take. There may be exceptions (being a demolitions guy or an electricity linesman or something) but in the case of office work and manual labour, I’d swear by it. People are much more adaptable and competent than we give ourselves credit for, because we never have to test it.

    As you can see my internet is finally back on, hence the long comments 😉

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    • Yay James is back, back again 🙂

      Money is definitely a big factor most of what I know about cars I know because I couldn’t afford mechanics and the haynes Manuel is a glorious thing. I don’t know how international Haynes is but they basically take every car apart and put it back together again so you see how it all works with lots of pics and little snippets of written by experts (I like to think if them as old men with beards and smoking pipes but that’s just me)

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haynes_Manual

      I’ve had lots of jobs too soldier nurse insurance broker industrial plant mechanic weighbridge operator Ice cream sales men and I’m currently Night Warden of a caravan park so yeah I can turn my hands to most things.

      I’m at work now had a nightmare of a week start of the season nothings been prepared right and we’re having loads of electrical issues its cold so all the visitors are staying in and using lots of heating which is straining are ancient electrical distribution system to breaking point spent till 3.30am last night rigging an industrial generator into are system to take a third of the load off teh breakers we had 4 100amp breakers running at 160+ amps you could roast marshmallows of the box

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      • In my working life I have been a cook, a truck driver, an undertaker and (when I move to New Zealand) am going to start bee keeping. I approach bosses telling them it’s their job to teach me, if I am not doing it correctly it’s their fault for not showing me how. It really jangles them up.
        Adaptability is a trait worth hanging on to. It’s healthy to keep learning.

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      • Undertaking to Bee Keeping that’s quite a jump. I love honey 🙂

        I agree about teaching when I’ve been responsible for training I always say there’s no such thing as a stupid question and you’ll never get in trouble for asking.

        Good to see ya as always Smoke

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  4. Goddammit I’m playing catch-up after working too much this week. I barely had time to do comments on my own post this week. Blah.

    Ok I was able to read half of this, and now I gotta race off to werk.
    For the record- werk is stoopid and I hate it.
    It’s killin’ me somehow, I’m sure.
    I’mma die like these Japanese cats who die from werkin’ too hard. They got a word for it an’ errthing.
    OhGawd I don’t wanna go. I wanna lay up at my computer desk and blaze trees and play wif my toys. All day. That would be awesome.
    -_-
    Don’t you judge me. I’m tired.

    But instead I’ll haul my beat up Xeno ass out into the freezing cold, and it snowed like a bitch yesterday and it all froze up overnight, and the city has pretty much given up any pretense of caring now, so there’s no plowing, no salt, the subways are a mess…
    So lemme go deal wif dat all day. Cuz yay, iz fun.

    A proper comment when I get home and finish reading this. There’s a Beakie in da header picture though, and that always scares me….

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  5. New content, plox.
    Things are starting to get predictable and boring out here….Where’s the random?

    Von’s podcast is awesome. Lolz.
    Put that fattie down, buddeh. Time to write a post.
    🙂

    …and before you even start riffin’ ’bout how I didn’t post last week, bet yer ass I’ll be posting tomorrow.
    Oh, and I’m on Twitter naow.
    It’s like, @MySinsynn, or sumpthin’ stoopid that they defaulted me to, but I’m there, an’ I’m tweeting.
    😀

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    • I’d go see a dr This tweeting business sounds painful 🙂

      So twitter is like a thing now isnit i had dismissed it as another friend face social wall bollocks type thing but maybe ill check it ooot

      OK I’ll try and get something written tomoz werks just been kicking my ass and I been a bit lazy haven’t actually smoked jutting since early Jan man took a tolerance break and suddenly noticed how much better my finances have been

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      • Holy crap dude it’s March. That’s like 3 months.
        Wow.
        I haven’t been sober fer 3 months ever. Not never.
        I, uh…don’t really pay fer trees so much. Maybe ten here and ten there outta the goodness of my heart, but having friends in the bizness (and a steppie), I suppose is verr helpful, finance-wise. I never sweat weed. It’s other chemicals that are an issue for me, and elbowing my way up the Block past the dealers who are all like, ‘Yo Lee- 3 fer 25 today’ is a massive pain in my ass.
        -_-
        Iz the Block tho. Waddayagonnado? Cats gotta eat, so cats gotta hustle.
        *shrug*

        But anytime a chemical becomes an issue, I’d drop it. I’ve dropped a bunch of ’em (Heroin you just don’t ‘drop,’ however, much to my consternation. Heh. Cocaine you drop, various pills you drop. Weed you drop. Heroin yer fucking married to, and it’ll fucking call you late at night and riff, just like an ex-wife), so I feel you.
        That’s what made me start the Heroin fight- money. When yer living on Ramen and less to feed yer habit, and hopping turnstyles cuz you don’t have money for the subway, shit is deep, and it’s gotta go.

        You go with yer bad self, dogz. If yer happy I’m happy, cuz that’s all I ever want- the people I care about to be happy.
        🙂

        I’m sitting here waiting for my post to go up (it might very well be wake and bake sunday), just bouncing around the net.

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