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My wife told me a great anecdote about her high school history teacher who described the spread of Christianity in Europe this way:
You're squatting in the filth in your little pagan kingdom, smacking a cat against the wall or whatever it is you illiterate savages do, when along comes a missionary. "We are your mobile service provider," he says, "let us connect you." What if this scenario were literally true?
Some time in the early bronze age (let's say between 5 and 6 thousand years ago), Mesopotamian wizards discovered how to make crystal balls. Made of glass or more durable polished quartz, a crystal ball can be entangled with another ball at the time of manufacture, showing whatever surrounds its partner, and, if you touch it, broadcasting sound as well. Relatively easy to make, crystal balls spread through Mesopotamia, Syria, and Egypt, allowing priests, wizards, scholars, officials, and even merchants to communicate instantly across long distances. And...
What changes when we give the ancient world the equivalent of the ansible? I predict that, while the boundaries of military empires won't be all that different (horses can only run so fast), cultural spheres of influence will become enormous, and more important. You'll get big areas of relatively homogenous language and culture, but with central military authority distributed among different political centers. Not just the Eastern and Western Roman Empires, but the Eastern, Western, Northern, African, Near Eastern, and Steppe Empires (assuming the Romans' ideas and language are most attractive. Otherwise we'll get the Roman government center of the Delightful Indian Empire).
Ideas will be the most valuable coin in this globalizing ancient world. Exciting ideas like writing, agriculture, and philosophy will spread with traders between the European and Asian civilizations, giving Europe Wheelbarrows, gunpowder, and better plows. Monotheism, an exiting new idea, will spread rapidly, but without a central church, actual practice (as opposed to doctrine) will differ wildly between the different "Abrahamist schools". The population boom associated with better farming will happen sooner, and the technological leap from swords to gunpowder might take place as early as 0AD. Since explorers will carry crystal balls with them, Sub-Saharan Africa, and even the Americas and Australia might be contacted long before any colonists show up.
Of course, the connected world might not be so happy and shiny. Since all the big centers of civilization are already connected via crystal ball, there might be less incentive to explore. Also, just because everyone CAN talk to everyone else doesn't mean they WILL. A Ptolemy might simply have nothing to say to a Satavahanan. We might get cultural blocs (probably long east-west-running strips). Rampaging hordes like the Mongols will know exactly where to go to get the best loot. Under the barrage of useless cultural garbage spewing through the crystal balls, some societies might find advantage in being xenophobic, or at least highly suspicious of the outside (if you live in Scandinavia, it won't be very helpful to learn how the Romans grow wheat, for example).
What do you think?
You're squatting in the filth in your little pagan kingdom, smacking a cat against the wall or whatever it is you illiterate savages do, when along comes a missionary. "We are your mobile service provider," he says, "let us connect you." What if this scenario were literally true?
Some time in the early bronze age (let's say between 5 and 6 thousand years ago), Mesopotamian wizards discovered how to make crystal balls. Made of glass or more durable polished quartz, a crystal ball can be entangled with another ball at the time of manufacture, showing whatever surrounds its partner, and, if you touch it, broadcasting sound as well. Relatively easy to make, crystal balls spread through Mesopotamia, Syria, and Egypt, allowing priests, wizards, scholars, officials, and even merchants to communicate instantly across long distances. And...
What changes when we give the ancient world the equivalent of the ansible? I predict that, while the boundaries of military empires won't be all that different (horses can only run so fast), cultural spheres of influence will become enormous, and more important. You'll get big areas of relatively homogenous language and culture, but with central military authority distributed among different political centers. Not just the Eastern and Western Roman Empires, but the Eastern, Western, Northern, African, Near Eastern, and Steppe Empires (assuming the Romans' ideas and language are most attractive. Otherwise we'll get the Roman government center of the Delightful Indian Empire).
Ideas will be the most valuable coin in this globalizing ancient world. Exciting ideas like writing, agriculture, and philosophy will spread with traders between the European and Asian civilizations, giving Europe Wheelbarrows, gunpowder, and better plows. Monotheism, an exiting new idea, will spread rapidly, but without a central church, actual practice (as opposed to doctrine) will differ wildly between the different "Abrahamist schools". The population boom associated with better farming will happen sooner, and the technological leap from swords to gunpowder might take place as early as 0AD. Since explorers will carry crystal balls with them, Sub-Saharan Africa, and even the Americas and Australia might be contacted long before any colonists show up.
Of course, the connected world might not be so happy and shiny. Since all the big centers of civilization are already connected via crystal ball, there might be less incentive to explore. Also, just because everyone CAN talk to everyone else doesn't mean they WILL. A Ptolemy might simply have nothing to say to a Satavahanan. We might get cultural blocs (probably long east-west-running strips). Rampaging hordes like the Mongols will know exactly where to go to get the best loot. Under the barrage of useless cultural garbage spewing through the crystal balls, some societies might find advantage in being xenophobic, or at least highly suspicious of the outside (if you live in Scandinavia, it won't be very helpful to learn how the Romans grow wheat, for example).
What do you think?
Fellow Tetrapod
Alright, here we go! My speculative-evolution serial novel Fellow Tetrapod is finally live on Royal Road. Go check it out. If it looks like your sort of thing, follow the story. It updates every weekday. (if you want to know more…) Koenraad Robbert Ruis used to be a paleontologist, but now he’s a cook at the United Nations embassy to the Convention of Sophonts. His bosses must negotiate with intelligent species from countless alternate earths, and Koen must make them breakfast. It turns out, though, that Koen is rather better at inter-species communication than any other human in this world (all nine of them). Everyone loves to eat (certain autotrophs excepted). Fellow Tetrapod is an speculative-evolution office comedy about food preparation, diplomacy, and what it’s like to be a talking animal. Serialized every weekday on Royal Road (https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/59198/fellow-tetrapod) and (one week earlier) Patreon(https://www.patreon.com/danielmbensen) Cover art by Simon
The Cicada
So, there I was, stalking the East Aegean cicada*. Its insistent, gearbox cough rose out of the electric pulse of the other insect life on the hillside behind the restaurant in northern Greece. When the buzzing stopped, I knew I was close, but it still took me another minute of looking before I picked it out against the bark of a sycamore**. The bug's spotted olive-gray shell matched the tree perfectly, but its symmetry gave it away. I called over Maggie and her cousin and pointed the cicada out to them. They went off to find a half dozen cast-off molts. I showed them the folded, piercing mouth-parts, telling the girls how the nymphs suck sap from tree roots until they climb out of the ground and molt into adults with wings but no mouths. If that's a metaphor, I don't want to use it. And I don't have to! Doing research for this newsletter, I found out that at least some adult cicadas do feed. Anyway, so do I. The reason we were at this restaurant in the first place is because I was
Doing Good
So there we were, giving this stranger 200 leva. "What? Are you serious?" He wasn't being sarcastic. He really wanted to check that what he thought was happening was actually happening. His face scrunched up, trying not to cry. That was when I was finally sure this wasn't all a scam. read on
Congratulations, Your Nightmare Came True
(see posts like this a week earlier on my Patreon for $1 a month) Our little blue car emerged from the tunnel and hummed up Botevgradsko Boulevard. To our left: a mural of chains melting off someone's forearms. The kids were looking out the windows, there was nobody to interrupt us and nothing that needed cleaning, and I relished the ability to complete a thought. "Ha!" I said. "What?" asked Pavlina. We stopped at a red light. "Congratulations," I said. "My nightmare came true. I've been called a racist on the internet." "Well, not exactly," said Pavlina. "Okay, I was called – " I corrected myself, " – my work was called 'problematic' in an email. That's like halfway there. That's a benchmark." "Yeah, okay. Congratulations." She wasn't being sarcastic. We turned and headed south toward Mount Vitosha, and I burned with joy. (see pictures and good formatting here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/63082454 ) In Man's Search for Meaning, psychologist Viktor Frankl talks about his brand of
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Great idea - information revolution without an industrial one...
The programming would likely be very different, since there are no mass-produced items to mass-market to anyone, ergo no advertising as we know it... As you mentioned, religious propaganda and news would be the primary uses of the crystal balls. On the religious front, crystal-ball televangelism might lead to the formation of syncretic religions, or brand-new "made for tv" ones.
Of course, crystal spheres might also be weaponized by using them as instant observation / communication devices. Imagine how devilishly efficient Mongol hordes would have been if each army (and their spies in hostile countries,) had them.
The programming would likely be very different, since there are no mass-produced items to mass-market to anyone, ergo no advertising as we know it... As you mentioned, religious propaganda and news would be the primary uses of the crystal balls. On the religious front, crystal-ball televangelism might lead to the formation of syncretic religions, or brand-new "made for tv" ones.
Of course, crystal spheres might also be weaponized by using them as instant observation / communication devices. Imagine how devilishly efficient Mongol hordes would have been if each army (and their spies in hostile countries,) had them.