new ideas?

[HardCarbon]

Who needs a windproof lantern when we have glow crystals?

Suckers probably cause mutations...

[Angela Christine]

It takes many steps for something new to become a common consumer product.  I don't actually know anything about the procedure, but those steps may include:

1.  Someone has an idea or discovery for a potential breakthrough, this can theoretically happen to anyone at anytime.  Apples fall on lots of people's heads, they don't all "discover" gravity.

2.  Big Money intervenes to refine and develop the idea.  This could be a government, large corperation, sizable inheritence, etc.  Something that allows a person or team of people to tinker with the idea without starving or running out of materials.

3.  The idea is developed into an expensive product of intrest to a few people.  Most people still don't know about it.  Some people who would want it can't afford it.  Some people know about it and who can afford it don't want it, because they don't trust it or prefer to keep using the old faithful product/procedure that they have been using for years.  

4.  Improvements in manufacturing, economy of scale, advertising and so on make the product a little cheaper and more well known, so more people want it.  It becomes well known and somewhat commonplace among upper-middle classes and better.

5.  Even cheaper, lower quality models are developed, and some of the earlier models become available on the second-hand market.  At this point the product is well known through all but the poorest segment of society.  This is the point in our world where a version of the product becomes available at places like Wal-Mart.

That is sort of a best-case senario where the technology goes from the reaserch stage to common consumer product in 10-15 years.  Sometimes an idea just doesn't take off.  The technology for video telephones has been available on Earth for decades, yet it still is nowhere near replacing audio-only telephones, to the dispair of 2001: A Space Odessy fans everywhere.  Video conferencing and web-cams are becoming somewhat common, but it looks like plain old telephones will still be in common use for decades to come.


In Zalanthas, take the example of medical equipment.  The current technology level could certainly certainly support some improvements in the medical equipment currently available to PC physicians.  Are people really stuck using nothing but "bandages" and "bandages with herbs"?  Why isn't there any visible progress in this field?

1.  Many of the rich people (the sort that fund research) don't need it.  If they need anything more than a band-aid and a cup of tea they have can afford magickal or divine healing.

2.  There are no institutions dedicated to the progress of mundane healing methods.

There may well be some progress, a wealthy house probably does have a private physician, perhaps more than one, plus a few field medics.  Some of those physicians will have time to tinker and develop improvements in equipment and procedures, but there is no system in place for those improvements to spread.  Medical care is done in private, there is no way and no reason for her methods to spread to anyone except her own apprentice, if she has one.  An old, experienced doctor probably has several methods and bits of custom made equipment that are unique, unfortunately most of her knowledge will die with her, and her equipment will be put to other uses.

All it would take to see dramatic improvements in medical care would be some wealthy organizations to establish a college of physicians and surgeons along with a charity hospital.  A charity hospital doen't just provide cheap or free healthcare to the poor, another important aspect of early charity hospitals was that they gave doctors unimportant people to experiment on.  If you have a nifty new idea you may be reluctant to test it out on your wealthy patron, if he is injured by it you'll get into trouble, but you can test it on charity cases, people who don't have the influence to get you into trouble and who probably would have died soon anyway.  Lots of doctors tinkering with hundreds of patients soon sorts out the good ideas from the loony ones, setting the stage for the next set of improvements on the good ideas.  But it is unlikely that anyone will set up a Charity Hospital in Zalanthas.  Most places simply don't have the resources to undertake the project.  Allanak might be able to muster the resources, but the rich in Allanak have easy access to magickal healers.  Tuluk has much less tollerence of magic and more resources than almost anywhere else in the world, but even in Tuluk the culture just doesn't seem likely to encourage anyone to set up a charity hospital.  So medical technology stagnates.


Medicine is an easy example, but the same sort of factors affect every kind of technological development.  No one is going to set up a university type structure for the free and open exchange of ideas.  Newspapers and reviewed journals are completely out of the question.  Those organazations that do have something akin to an R&D department are going to focus on fairly narrow fields, and are going to do their very best to prevent their discoveries from becoming public.


These are the dark ages, not the age of enlightenment.  Discoveries are made, but rarely distributed outside the family, and so they are usually lost within a generation or two.  A particularily organized scholarly type might write it down, but in all probability his dull looking journals will be added to the family archive and rarely read, and even more rarely will their value be understood and recognised.  It is hardly necessary for most new discoveries to be actively surpressed, in the current culture the knowledge will tend to wither away.


Angela Christine