What Would a Modernized Lumar Look Like?

[TheFlatScadrian]

Just something on my mind. 

Submarines? Water guns? Fire hoses? Aircraft Carriers? What do we think? 

[First of the Tide He/him]

We kind of see something like this in IotE, 

Spoiler

with the spores being used for space travel Although, since Dhatri is gonna be more prominent, those are probably from Dhatri).

But I think that Lumar's advancements would be heavily based on use of the enviroment. Water is gonna be very important to have. Someone who has control of water can grow a defensive wall in seconds, or make an army of midnight essences. I also think controlling the sieve might be a big goal, whichin turn leads to flight, to get around that issue. I don't think however, they're gonna develop things like spy drones, or electricity as we know it, since it's so heavily based on making 2 things. Heat and motion. Both of those can more easily be made with spores. (Sunlight/Verdant)

[Elite01]

I think getting better boats would be one of the first steps, changing from sodden boats that use sails to metal ships with engines of some kind would help, increasing durability would help as well (idk how propellers work with the spores) 

creating “submarines” that stay on the surface would be interesting (so you don’t have to worry about pressure) but using engines for propulsion and having a shell protecting the crew would minimize casualties 

Spoilers for emberdark

Spoiler

I think similar to the way that Patji was tamed we will see the dangerous spore seas tamed as well. 

Inventing flight would remove a lot of concerns as well. Once the seas can be traveled the scattered communities can work together to develop the world

[Jult]

1 hour ago, Elite01 said:

I think getting better boats would be one of the first steps, changing from sodden boats that use sails to metal ships with engines of some kind would help, increasing durability would help as well (idk how propellers work with the spores) 

We know from Chapter 26 that spores actually have very specific interactions with metals:

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She took the tool that resembled a shield and pressed it to the roseite. The crystals responded immediately, pulling toward the metal, which (from the slate grey color) seemed to be simple iron. The other tool, the trowel, made the crystals grow away from it. It was of polished silvery metal. (Steel, for those who compulsively track these things.)

And these specific interactions will probably look familiar to readers of other Cosmere novels.

I wonder what increased levels of harvesting would do to the seas? Currently, all 12 are said to be around equal size. But some are obviously more useful than others. If Zephyr is heavily harvested in comparison to the other 11, would the Zephyr sea start to shrink? Would that cause a planetwide decrease in ocean depth?

[alder24]

Ships will always be useful, but I think airships are the way to go on Lumar. Even with modern ships, you're always in danger because of spores, so you have to deal with them getting onto your ship, you have to be careful with water and avoid rain (which is impossible on the Crimson Sea). Not to mention there are periods when seethe stops and no modern ship can deal with that. There are simply too many risks with ships so the best way to avoid all those risks is by going into the air. 

You can use Zephyr and Sunlight spores to create air and heat and with them you can easily go airborne. There are little to no spores in the air, you don't have to worry about them getting on board, rain isn't dangerous anymore and seethe doesn't matter to you at all. And because islands are small, you don't even need large spaces for runways that planes need, you can just land your airship right next to islands. Airships are ideal on Lumar, they are probably the very next major technological milestone they should achieve. 

Unfortunately, because Lumar lacks big open spaces and is confined to extremely small islands, large scale industrialization isn't possible there. Unless they master spores like Xisis did and create safe living spaces under the sea it would be hard for them to find places to build their factories, not to mention that they probably have a severe lack of raw resources like iron and coal, because it's most likely buried deep under the seafloor. They first have to learn how to fully control spores before they start thinking of modernization.

They can definitely replace some of raw resources with spores, like using roseite as a construction material, sunlight and zephyr as a substitute of fossil fuels etc. Thanks to spores, Lumar will most likely develop a magical technology similar to that of Roshar, so we won't see Earth-like tech that is present on Scadrial. However, Lumar is already far behind other places in Cosmere in terms of technological development. They are just at the early stages of the early modern period, when others have spaceships. It's far more likely that instead of developing their own unique technology, they will receive technology directly from other space fearing civilizations like Scadrial or Roshar in return for spores.