suppose somebody in ancient Rome discovered and invented a bunch of modern stuff

Tachyon · 2013-09-26 11:07:59

like suppose they were a time traveller or an alien or from another universe or whatever, and they arrived in ancient Rome and invented the microscope and penicillin and electromagnets and flight and mechanical clocks, that kind of thing.

what would the present then be like?

Miss Miko Mayonegg · 2013-09-26 11:51:49

The nuclear wasteland that the world must someday become. :)

Tachyon · 2013-09-26 11:52:48

BORING

Tachyon · 2013-09-26 11:53:29

UNLESS that means we now live in a post-apocalyptic desert and are trying to rebuild society while struggling to survive ourselves

that's cool

Miss Miko Mayonegg · 2013-09-26 11:55:54

Yeah. :D Also un-mutated humans oppress mutated ones. :o

Zersk · 2013-09-26 12:45:30

I dunno if you can just copy-paste technology from the future into a time period that doesn't really have the infrastructure set up for it. : o Having all those fancy toys are nice and all but without the development to use them a lot of them might not be useful? Flight and electromagnets at least. Microscopes might be possible, though I'm not sure if their methods at that time were precise enough to shape glass like that? :? I'm not sure how intensive the process for penicillin is though. : o

lee4hmz · 2013-09-26 12:59:27

Penicillin might be possible, since it's fermented and fermentation has been known about for millennia.

Zersk · 2013-09-26 13:06:06

True! Hm.

You could actually have a large effect briniging back future technology, but you'd have to look in the right places. So possibly some medicinal technologies and maybe some non machinery based farming technologies.

Tachyon · 2013-09-26 13:25:41

why not machinery?

electronics are probably out of the question but even then, with the know how you could plausibly construct a generator. i don't see why you'd be dependent on any existing infrastructure.

Salix Babylonika · 2013-09-26 13:35:47

I think for the sake of argument we can assume the infrastructure would be created as well.

Zersk · 2013-09-26 14:11:22

Tachyon: Maybe mechanics as well. :o We know the antikythera mechanism exists. (Which brings up the question of how much effect it would have) And for generators there's the whole 'fuel' thing.

Mojave: So how would that be then, like a work team from the future comes in and lays down rails and roads and powerlines and pipelines and stuff? :o

Tachyon · 2013-09-26 14:27:21

Well that's a different scenario, but yeah, if you want.

Fuel needn't mean fossil fuels; anything that burns will do. You can make a hydro generator without fuel using magnets and copper wire, assuming you can obtain those.

Tachyon · 2013-09-26 14:32:58

i think it's a given that our future/alien inventor knows how to make a printing press, so information can be distributed that way using existing trade routes. To some extent the infrastructure necessary for more advanced tech could plausibly be set up within their lifetime.

Viani · 2013-09-26 14:38:16

The Roman Empire would never crumble.

Aliroz · 2013-09-28 12:33:55

You think so, Viani?

Zersk · 2013-09-28 15:58:58

When it comes to Alternate History, that does tend to be the way the cookie crumbles.

EDIT: But for seriousness, I dunno if it would help the Roman Empire at all. :p I mean the actual issues of the Decline would still be there. The new technology may help exacerbate it, who knows.

Mr. Darcy · 2013-09-28 16:13:05

Well, different technologies you could introduce would probably work at cross purposes in the Roman Empire. If you introduce the steam engine, the labor required in agriculture will be reduced by an order of magnitude, underminig the slave-based economy. Gunpowder, OTOH, would give them a major techological edge over the barbarians (chainmail and iro swords were no better than what the Celts had; the Roman edge was in how they fought); this would let conquests continue for awhile and therefore increase the slave supply.

Tachyon · 2013-09-28 16:15:40

So perhaps there would be a period during which there was an influx of slaves without sufficient demand for them?

Zersk · 2013-09-28 16:17:08

Though mind you, depending on when you gave this technology to them, there might already be plenty of Celts and shit in the military. That's usually one of the reasons given for the fall of the Empire, that they hired people with no loyalty to it to fight for them. And if they were given superior weapons...

Mind you, Roman tactics might not work with the fancy technology. That was the issue with WWI, that people were using the new technology but fighting like they used to.

suppose somebody in ancient Rome discovered and invented a bunch of modern stuff

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