Technology Level

[Bri-Y]

Is anyone baffled by the level of technology that Navani and her artifabrians understand/employ?

Most explicitly, this book has Navani showing high understanding in sound and vibration, even going so far as creating a sound that cancels other sound, something I don’t think happened until around the 1930s and more practically in the 50’s.

Yet none of the fabrial engineers have had the idea of applying the idea of vibration=sound to fabrials and creating a device that transmits sound, something that is as easy to understand as is the idea of tying two cans two a string?

They seem know enough about windmills to understand that they can use gears to wind up weights in a shaft, yet they don’t apply that understanding to their flying craft, and rather just have chulls move back and forth across a field?

It’s a small thing to complain about, but enough of an issue that I decided to rant about it in this forum.

[Lunu’anaki he/him]

4 hours ago, Bri-Y said:

Is anyone baffled by the level of technology that Navani and her artifabrians understand/employ?

Most explicitly, this book has Navani showing high understanding in sound and vibration, even going so far as creating a sound that cancels other sound, something I don’t think happened until around the 1930s and more practically in the 50’s.

I'm not baffled that they have a ton of built up knowledge, you have to remember that for much of history things were being destroyed and rebuilt constantly, and technology was always guided by the heralds and the fused, ancient peoples who have been shown to be very stuck in their ways. RoW explores this a lot with Raboniel and Navanni.

4 hours ago, Bri-Y said:

Yet none of the fabrial engineers have had the idea of applying the idea of vibration=sound to fabrials and creating a device that transmits sound, something that is as easy to understand as is the idea of tying two cans two a string?

I have no doubt this is coming. Span reads are a new invention. I believe Navanni was alive to see their creation, was she not? These sciences are also very clandestine in nature. It's not information given out to the public because of the constant war on Roshar. Everyone wants a military advantage and therefore they hide knowledge from one another.

4 hours ago, Bri-Y said:

They seem know enough about windmills to understand that they can use gears to wind up weights in a shaft, yet they don’t apply that understanding to their flying craft, and rather just have chulls move back and forth across a field?

It’s a small thing to complain about, but enough of an issue that I decided to rant about it in this forum.

They did eventually come to that conclusion though, and there were discoveries required to do so. Remember how Navanni needed a device that could alter the direction of the force before using anything other than lateral motion to guide the ship?

 

There are definitely holes in it here and there, it is fiction after all; but I do think there are good explanations for many of the issues you've addressed here.

[Kitch]

External forces have a huge part in what they develop. Since they are constantly wracked by storms, they have a strong understanding of action/reaction. Push on this, affect this. Very kinetic.

 

But delicacy isn't their strong suit. Which is probably why working with minute strings and vibrations lost them.

 

But if they want to lift or move or do something massive? They know how to throw a ton of resources at something to make it work. Like the flying bridge. 

 

[Bri-Y]

I get all that, but it bothers me that there is enough understanding about sound and vibration that Navani knew about the theory of noise cancelation, and yet no one thought to apply it to fabrials? That shows a high understanding of the principles of sound, but a incredible myopia about applying it in their technology. Even by accident, it would have been as simple as leaving one half of a conjoined fabrial in a bowl while speaking loudly near the other half.

That said, much of the ideas of conjoined fabrials aren’t logical, especially when thinking about whether you can use one while riding a moving vehicle, or ignoring the spinning of the planet. Perhaps if you don’t intend a fabrial to transmit the vibrations from sound, it won’t work. Still dumb of them not to figure it out.

[Lunu’anaki he/him]

6 hours ago, Bri-Y said:

I get all that, but it bothers me that there is enough understanding about sound and vibration that Navani knew about the theory of noise cancelation, and yet no one thought to apply it to fabrials?

Isn't that just realistic though? We have inventions like this in the real world, throughout human history, that take hundreds of years to be turned into a usable and popular device even though the understanding they are based on was developed centuries before.

The camera is a perfect example. Camera obscuras existed all the way back in 470 BC, Photochemical reactions were known to humans by 1801, why then did it take 60 years to have a working camera? Why wasn't the first camera used as soon as 1805? 1815?

For that matter, why didn't the ancient greeks realize that photosynthesis existed, and therefore seek out novel ways to use plants in order to record their camera obscura images? Why didn't the renaissance artists? 

These sorts of connections arn't made overnight. It takes care and interest, plus luck, to make these sort of discoveries. People often don't think outside of the confines of what's possible right in front of them, and those few who do often have very specific goals in doing so. 

Edited January 3, 2021 by Lunu’anaki

[Greywatch she/her]

It is so easy for us to look back, with our mountain of foundational knowledge of the world and how it works and think that the order of science and technology discovered and invented in our history is the only order that it could have been. This is not so. Earth's history is filled with different cultures at different times inventing things and discovering principles "out of order" with each other, according to the needs, social mores, and foundation of knowledge that each culture had at the time.

The notion of "progress" being a steady upward climb is a lie. Technologies have been invented, lost, and re-invented numerous times. The Minoans had water and sewage systems, with working toilets, in 2500 BCE, 3000 years before they figured it out in England. First Nations in eastern Canada figured out technology like barometers and other weather instruments before they figured out how to work metal. The cure for scurvy was known to be citrus for ages, then due to a series of events people of the time rightly began to doubt its efficacy and they went back to thinking it wasn't citrus for quite a while before it was tested and re-confirmed to be citrus.

Increasing the base of human scientific knowledge is not simple and straightforward. What we think of as obvious connections to make once took enormous imagination and willingness to test them. People take logical leaps in the wrong direction and it takes time to undo "progress" in the wrong direction.

It is very easy for humans to look back and take everything the history of humanity has been able to achieve as a given; it takes a lot of work and imagination to make forward development. Even when looking back as little as 30 years - the Internet was not conceived of or expected until it came upon us. The thought of "well of COURSE we invented the internet, how could we not" is the mistake; in another world, that leap wouldn't have been made, and we would be living in a 2021 without the Internet.

Then bringing it back to Stormlight Archive, the Rosharans have an incredible foundation of knowledge from bits and pieces that survived the Desolations; they are not an example of a simple medieval society fumbling around in the dirt. Even the sure knowledge they have to simply wash their hands to prevent rot is an enormous breakthrough that by itself could have lent itself to even more scientific knowledge.

[mathiau he/him]

On 02/01/2021 at 2:41 AM, Bri-Y said:

Is anyone baffled by the level of technology that Navani and her artifabrians understand/employ?

I'm certainly not

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Most explicitly, this book has Navani showing high understanding in sound and vibration, even going so far as creating a sound that cancels other sound, something I don’t think happened until around the 1930s and more practically in the 50’s

Actually, concepts more advanced than wave conservation where understood by 1800, and the technology needed to understand them had been available for centuries. Navani is magically creating a sound wave with a precision we couldn't attain before 1930, but she has no reason not too know it was hypothetically possible

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Yet none of the fabrial engineers have had the idea of applying the idea of vibration=sound to fabrials and creating a device that transmits sound, something that is as easy to understand as is the idea of tying two cans two a string?

 

Have YOU ever tried to make a ruby move with your voice? (not your breath, your voice) I never did but I doubt it'd move in any way noticeable without the amplifier Navani discovered in WoR, and even that don't seems easy.

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They seem know enough about windmills to understand that they can use gears to wind up weights in a shaft, yet they don’t apply that understanding to their flying craft, and rather just have chulls move back and forth across a field?

Their solution seems smaller and with similar difficulty keeping it working

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It’s a small thing to complain about, but enough of an issue that I decided to rant about it in this forum.

No problem, this forum is kind of made for that