Advanced technology without electricity?

Discussion in 'General Science & Technology' started by Athelwulf, Feb 7, 2007.

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Is technology as advanced as ours possible without electricity?

  1. Yes, it is.

    4 vote(s)
    33.3%
  2. No, it's not.

    8 vote(s)
    66.7%
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  1. Athelwulf Rest in peace Kurt... Registered Senior Member

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    Electricity is a fundamental part of our technology. Nearly everything in our daily lives either runs on it, was made by something that runs on it, or is in some other way related to it.

    My question is, could we have gotten to this stage of technological development — or rather, an analogous stage — without electricity, even if it would've taken us much longer? How much can possibly be done without the use of electricity? At what point does electricity become absolutely necessary? If we could've gotten this far without it, how long do you suppose it would've taken?
     
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  3. leopold Valued Senior Member

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    yes, i believe that we could've gotten pretty close to where we are now without electricity. we could substitute water to turn the armatures of machinery.
    one thing that we could not do was electroplate
     
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  5. alexb123 The Amish web page is fast! Valued Senior Member

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    The history of mechanical technology rests with two methods coal or electricity. What would be interesting to know would be what would have happened if electircy had been discovered before coal (steam) went mainstream?

    Without electricity I can only see stream trains and watermills.
     
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  7. draqon Banned Banned

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    well having huge caPabilities in genetic bio engineering...does that still count as electricity? bc....the organisms as all animals do use electricity neurons and such...

    Anyways there are civilizations that have gone the genetic engineering route...having homes which are organisms and vehicles that can take the sPecies to sPace and beyond...and survive well.
     
  8. Avatar smoking revolver Valued Senior Member

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    19,083
    No shit, what civilizations?

    That reminds me of West of Eden books by Harry Harrison, there an alternative route of evolution had taken place and dinosaurs had huge cities and advanced biotechnology. Living ships, living firearms, living scanners, living cities.

    And then they met primitive men...
     
  9. Athelwulf Rest in peace Kurt... Registered Senior Member

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    I discussed the matter with a friend last night, soon after I made this thread. She thinks that to get as far as we have without electricity, we would have to have something just as capable of transmitting information quickly. She said that light would be the most likely candidate.

    What do you think?
     
  10. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    I really doubt we would have advanced technologically as far as we have without electricity. I have heard of hydraulic computers that use oil instead of electricity, and mechanical gates.
     
  11. francois Schwat? Registered Senior Member

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    This is a very interesting question. I answered "Yes, it's possible." This is because ultimately, I think very few things are impossible. That's the best real reason I can think of. Whether or not it's possible to develop such a technology without first having an electricity-based technology first, as a precedent might be harder to imagine.

    Ultimately, we have to agree that technology as we think of it, requires some kind of energy to power it. Perhaps we can control the strong nuclear forces from within atoms to cause some kind of cascade effect. To trickle mechanical motion from one atom to another. Light might be a way to do this. Control of circuits through the means of controlled photons.
     
  12. Athelwulf Rest in peace Kurt... Registered Senior Member

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    In reference to my previous mention of light, it struck me that we can transmit information quickly with light today with optical fiber.

    The Wikipedia article says that the principle behind optical fibers of guiding light was first demonstrated in Victorian times. And this site lists some interesting advantages of optical fibers over metal wiring, one of which is a much greater bandwidth.

    So let's discuss: Could light have developed into a feasible alternative to electricity? If we relied on light instead of electricity, would fiber-optic technology have developed much sooner? And if so, would its greater bandwidth have enabled us to advance much faster and much farther than we have on electricity?
     
  13. francois Schwat? Registered Senior Member

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    Wait--of course this could be done. You'd just need to substitute electrons with something else. Photons would be a good option. EM waves.
     
  14. Athelwulf Rest in peace Kurt... Registered Senior Member

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    That's a clever idea.
     
  15. Facial Valued Senior Member

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    I take EM waves to be a part of electricity, because they are part of the same fundamental force at normal temperature. So I voted no.

    So far I can't imagine the proper engineering required to master technology with the strong, weak, or gravitational forces.
     
  16. phonetic stroking my banjo Registered Senior Member

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    I doubt it. We'd be using a badly polished mirror to direct light into the fibre optics, which are crap when we don't have electricity to perfect them? I can't see it myself.

    How would we transfer power? Say I want to hoover my carpet. Is it a 6ft cube and full of water turning the machinery? Might be a little top heavy with the gravity chamber. Or maybe it's small enough to handle but only lasts 1 minute before I need to fill it up again?
     
  17. weed_eater_guy It ain't broke, don't fix it! Registered Senior Member

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    I think it's essential for the technology we have today, but if somehow, life on this planet could spontaneously evolve or something, we'd be masters of biological manipulation first?

    Anyone ever seen an old silent movie called "metropolis"? really old, computers were mechanical if i remember, steam driven. this was waaaay before the idea of an electronic computer, let alone a microchip, was on a drawing table... movie came out within the last 100 years too. makes you think.

    I wonder what would've happened if electricity became more mainstream centuries earlier than it had... lord knows where we'd be.
     
  18. Nasor Valued Senior Member

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    The natural of electricity is a pretty fundamental thing in science. The principles that govern it are used all over, from chemistry to physics to astronomy to biology. To put it bluntly, if you don’t understand electricity then you probably don’t have a prayer of understanding anything else on an advanced level.

    As for optical technology…what do you suppose they use to generate the pulses of light that travel down a fiber-optic cable? What do you suppose that use as a detector to monitor the pulses of light as they emerge from the cable? Electronic devices, of course.
     
  19. ScottMana Registered Senior Member

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    Did you ever stop to think that everything is made up of electricity? Electricity is just a one state of energy. It is in a state that moves through wires very nicely. So no, I don't think that without the ability to channel the building blocks of this universe, we would be able to work with any other advanced technology.
     
  20. Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

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    I think it's a moot point. Once the scientific method was established, we would have figured out electromagnetism pretty quickly. Electromagnetism and gravity are the two fundamental forces that are readily observed at the macro level, which is where our lives take place. Electromagnetism is the only one of the two which we can manipulate, and in which natural fluctuations draw our attention. Just as a single example, it would be hard to stop Ben Franklin from wondering about it.
     
  21. freestyle Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    71
    aren't humans pretty advanced? we're like biomachines or something...
     
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