Ways we could have been technologically advanced/backward?

[Ace]

If the original Star Trek series had not been cancelled after season three, there would now be a "United Federation of Planets", for real!

 

[Perfection]

Well, these machines did exist. I don't recall if Leibniz ever actually completed his (he was terrible for starting projects and never finishing them), but Pascal had certainly built his. Leibniz' would have been an improved version. You are right that they were little more than curiosities - just like Charles Babbage's later, more famous designs. But if they'd thought of making them binary, perhaps they could have become more than that. (Probably not, really, but it's nice to imagine.) I'm sure Leibniz would have found a million uses for such a thing - he was far more than just a chemist/philosopher (he got the idea of binary from the I Ching)! As I said, he was very interested in the problem of how to store and categorise information, and even posited a scheme where you assign a primary number to every "basic" concept, and then complex concepts can be assigned the number you get from multiplying all the numbers of their constituents. For example: the concept "man" is a combination of the concepts "rational" and "animal". Assign 2 to "rational" and 3 to "animal", and "man" gets the value 6. Of course this rapidly becomes unworkable, because even if you can analyse the relationships between all the concepts, the numbers get astronomically big. But stop thinking in base 10, and things become easier. (Don't ask me how.)

I think a lot of this simply has to do with manufacturing technology. With the materials at the time, I would doubt you could build something significantly faster at calculating then humans, and it wouldn't have much reliability.

 

[sydhe]

If Mendel's paper had been noticed by Darwin when first written, we would have had a synthesis of their ideas in the 1870s and probably be facing Hitler clones by now.

 

[Harvin87]

The Nazis breaking Stalingrad and Moscow, and Soviets capitulating... oh boy... thank god that didn't happen...

 

[LightSpectra]

If the crusades had not happened we would not have the hostility between the West and the Middle East.

Bad blood was between Europe and the Middle East since way before the Crusades, and furthermore, the current hostility between us has nothing to do with the Crusades whatsoever.

 

[My Pet Hamster]

Why do you say "us", while your location says "Maryland, U.S."? and no, us and U.S.
are not the same thing.

 

[LightSpectra]

We are a hivemind, of course.

 

[innonimatu]

Bad blood was between Europe and the Middle East since way before the Crusades, and furthermore, the current hostility between us has nothing to do with the Crusades whatsoever.

Well, taking another approach, if the Crusades had succeeded we would be living in a completely different world. And they could, those small islamic states were weak on several occasions, not much better than the Taifas in Iberia. But so were the crusaders.

 

[North King]

Well I think the Islamic Golden Age ended like 2-3 centuries later - and so we would arrive nicely in the Medievil ages and remain so. Remember the secrets of the universe and metaphysics are ALL in the Koran .

lolno. 2-3 centuries before the 8th century is the 5th-6th century which were entirely Islam free. The Golden Age was in the 800s to 900s. Arguably they could have lasted even longer in an Islamic Europe, because a major factor in the downfall of Islamic civilization was the invasion of steppe tribes that devastated urbanized (and cultured) societies and caused them to become a good deal more insular and clingy to their religion and guns swords. A Muslim Europe would not have had those problems to the same degree.

 

[Lord Baal]

lolno. 2-3 centuries before the 8th century is the 5th-6th century which were entirely Islam free. The Golden Age was in the 800s to 900s. Arguably they could have lasted even longer in an Islamic Europe, because a major factor in the downfall of Islamic civilization was the invasion of steppe tribes that devastated urbanized (and cultured) societies and caused them to become a good deal more insular and clingy to their religion and guns swords. A Muslim Europe would not have had those problems to the same degree.

So, if Winner is right in his inane ramblings about Islam taking over Europe, we're actually heading in the right direction now? Sweet.

 

[Masada]

So, if Winner is right in his inane ramblings about Islam taking over Europe, we're actually heading in the right direction now? Sweet.

We should convert and head off the inevitable now while we still can!

 

[Traitorfish]

Well, these machines did exist. I don't recall if Leibniz ever actually completed his (he was terrible for starting projects and never finishing them), but Pascal had certainly built his. Leibniz' would have been an improved version. You are right that they were little more than curiosities - just like Charles Babbage's later, more famous designs.

The idea of such machines being widely utilised is explored in William Gibson's novel The Difference Engine, and without too much silliness- this was written back when "steampunk" meant applying the technological-social obsevation of cyberpunk to an industrial setting, rather than "steam-powered rocket pants", as it does today.

 

[ParkCungHee]

So, if Winner is right in his inane ramblings about Islam taking over Europe, we're actually heading in the right direction now? Sweet.

Potentially, yes.
I mean, We DID have an Islamic Europe (in part) for centuries. The Ottomans always viewed themselves as a European rather then Middle Eastern (the term didn't exist at the time) power. In general the Ottoman's are much more preferable then the Muslim world today, and if you consider the Golden Age of the Ottoman's to be a "Muslim" Golden age, then it really lasts until the 1600s, and then at least muddles along into the 20th century.

 

[Dachs]

The, ah, Ottoman Turkish "golden age" wasn't really what NK was talking about. Then again, I dunno how accurate his characterization of the fall of the Umayyads and 'Abbasids was anyway.

 

[Lord Baal]

The, ah, Ottoman Turkish "golden age" wasn't really what NK was talking about. Then again, I dunno how accurate his characterization of the fall of the Umayyads and 'Abbasids was anyway.

I always thought their downfall had more to do with their own infighting than the Mongols and others showing up myself. The Mongols helped, but a unified front would surely have at least held them back. After all, Mongols were not invincible, as proven by the Mamelukes, among others.

And the Ottoman 'Golden Age' ended pretty quickly, and descended into mediocrity and weakness. I don't particularly like the idea of a 'European Question' myself.

 

[Quackers]

lolno. 2-3 centuries before the 8th century is the 5th-6th century which were entirely Islam free. The Golden Age was in the 800s to 900s. Arguably they could have lasted even longer in an Islamic Europe, because a major factor in the downfall of Islamic civilization was the invasion of steppe tribes that devastated urbanized (and cultured) societies and caused them to become a good deal more insular and clingy to their religion and guns swords. A Muslim Europe would not have had those problems to the same degree.

I said 2-3 centuries after. Wikipedia says Golden age lasted from 7th - 13th centuries AD. In any case thats a lot of turns!

 

[Dachs]

I always thought their downfall had more to do with their own infighting than the Mongols and others showing up myself. The Mongols helped, but a unified front would surely have at least held them back. After all, Mongols were not invincible, as proven by the Mamelukes, among others.

The late ninth and early tenth centuries were when the 'Abbasid state fell apart, and it wasn't the Mongols NK was talking about (probably?), but the Khurasanians and the Turks. The former broke 'Abbasid control in Central Asia and eastern Iran, and eventually the Buwayhids suborned the 'Abbasid Caliphs into "accepting" their "protection"; the Turks a half-century later more or less destroyed the last vestiges of independence for awhile such that the slightly revived thirteenth-century 'Abbasid state in Iraq was no match at all for Hulagu et al.

Anyway, yeah, the 'Abbasid state's loss of control and ultimate demise were due to the disconnect between state and provincial society and a related formation of state structures at the provincial level, dominated by Turkic and other warlords who were given even more autonomy by the state in exchange for temporary military successes, the inability to maintain such a friggin' huge empire, and some foreign pressures. The caliphate's demise was actually pretty lame, IMHO. This wasn't like the Umayyads who ran away and founded a new caliphate for a new golden age thousands of miles away, or the Sasanians who staked it all on Nihavand and lost, or the Byzantines who fought on the walls of Constantinople and in the breaches virtually to the last man. There wasn't any "glorious loser" for the 'Abbasids.

I said 2-3 centuries after. Wikipedia says Golden age lasted from 7th - 13th centuries AD.

errrrr sorry to spoil the party but Islam is taking over Europe

 

[ParkCungHee]

The, ah, Ottoman Turkish "golden age" wasn't really what NK was talking about. Then again, I dunno how accurate his characterization of the fall of the Umayyads and 'Abbasids was anyway.

Oh, I know it wasn't, I'm just saying that the idea that we'd be stuck in the middle ages if we were Muslim is silly because the Muslims (albeit under new rulers) themselves were still doing quite well into the 1500s and 1600s and were nothing to be laughed at in the 1700s.

 

[Masada]

Who needs facts? I'm an economist!

 

[Dodge_272]

The library of Alexandria not burning down would be a good start I suppose.