Is the Triad Weyrs scenario like ....

[Jane]

India.

That's my thought for the day.

(Disclaimer:  I know less about India than I do about America!)

I have been trying to settle in my mind how the Triad technology scenario works.  (Let's forget the female repression stuff for the moment!)  What was bothering me was how a society could have some people living the way they had been 1200 years before (when we last saw them in Anne's writings) and yet have advanced so that electricity is plentiful and accepted in larger locations, personal bathing rooms have become the norm in some of our Weyrs, and ... well, the fact that there are riverboats.

How do we reconcile using slates and hides, yet having romance novels printed on paper?

What about refrigeration and spit canines?

Riverboats and sailing ships?

Then I thought of India.  From world-class technology, through power in cities, right along to more rural people living in traditional ways with very few changes over many hundreds of years.

Yep.  India has helped me make sense of Triad's technology scenario.

(The riverboat crew are happy to hear this!)

Does India help anybody else out?

[Vix]

I didn't think of India, but remembered in the past hearing that in many ways Triad was set in an atmosphere much like 19th century America as far as technology. When I look for technical information for posts, I find the lowest level of tech within an "innovation" as I can -- such as with refrigeration, not choosing a type that would require specific gases to be extracted-compressed-installed (or whatever terms -- I usually read only enough to understand and post at that moment, or to make Jane's eyes glaze over if that's what she wants her characters to do in reaciton to mine).

As far as different levels of technology within the same world, I have been in so many homes in the past 10 years with different lifestyles that it really does not seem a contradiction to me. I need only look out my front window and see both cars and horse-drawn buggies passing by.

[Eimi]

The way I reconciled the levels of technology in my head was that Pern started out with Mid-evil technology (at least at the time of the first books), but then suddenly a computer dropped information on how to build the technology of the industrial revolution down on people.  Now some people would take that new knowledge and say "Yes!  Something new!  Lets play with it!", while others would be saying "What do we need that for when what we have has always been good enough!" and still others would say "How do we know its really a good thing?  If it really was so good, why wouldn't the Ancients have taught us these things?"  The people in the high population areas, where ideas are more easily shared, would be more trusting of the technology, while the further from the "cities" you go, the less people trust it.  And not only trust the new technology, but can AFFORD the new technology.  This would be especially true because there are no factories, so its all pretty much hand made.

And yes, I would say Jane that such a mind set is exactly like a lot of developing nations today.  A mix of the old and the new and the further from the city you go, the more traditional and mistrusting of everything new they become.

[Yvonne]

I think Anne's to blame for the messy technology. :P I studied technology and the evolution thereof as my major (anthropology/archaeology) and a lot of what she's set up makes NO SENSE. Generally, when there's a new idea that's efficient and makes a profit, people latch onto it without examining the long-term consequences (see the Industrial Revolution for examples).

I think of Triad as slightly pre-Industrial Revolution. Kind of. I think as Weyrs as more cosmopolitan than the Holds, and technologies such as paper as in the process of replacing hides for good. Why? Hides are costly, whereas I'd imagine what technology AVIAS left has been refined and worked on by Technicians in the interveining centuries into something more modern. We have an entire Hall devoted to inventing, and to me it makes NO SENSE that technology hasn't been embraced in our scenario. :P But whatever.

So, my guidelines:

* Paper and printing presses are plentiful but still a bit of a novelty, and quality novels (vs. penny dreadfuls) are expensive and hard to come by. Hides are kept for archives because they keep longer.
* Steam engines are around and are used on ships (and river boats!) but are either unreliable and prone to explode or coal is expensive. There HAVE to be people trying to think of ways to adapt steam engines for land use.
* Electricity is taken for granted.
* There are clocks, but candles are cheaper. I'm sure Lord Holders and whatnot have access to personal watches, and Smiths can make a killing as a clockmaker.
* I want someone to invent a bicycle and start a bicycle craze. Only for some reason Pern has no pavement.

Mostly I just find it frustrating that Pern has been hovering at the same technological level for centuries and there is no innovation. India is a good example, actually - the technology is out there, only people seem to have trouble adapting it into their lives. Partially I think this is also because the Pernese are a bunch of red commies. ;) Most technology would be too costly for the averege Joe, and the specialized knowledge to implement and maintain most of it is well guarded.

[Jane]

Paper and printing presses are plentiful but still a bit of a novelty, and quality novels (vs. penny dreadfuls) are expensive and hard to come by.

Somewhere in here is the reason everybody gets so stressed up about their romance novels being swiped. *grins*  It must be because they paid good marks for them!

I think of Triad as slightly pre-Industrial Revolution. ...

Yep, yep.  The rural folk.  The major Hold and Hall folk, slightly post-IR?

Steam engines are around and are used on ships (and river boats!) but are either unreliable and prone to explode or coal is expensive.

I'd like everybody to be reassured that the riverboat engines are perfectly safe ... until we have a plot that dictates otherwise.  And having the wonderful advantage of AIVAS's advice on renewable resources, they burn wood.  (Nothing to do with it being in plentiful supply down the riverbanks!)

Mostly I just find it frustrating that Pern has been hovering at the same technological level for centuries and there is no innovation.

Obviously we need this to be the case for the Triad scenario, but IC reasoning might be the frequency of those bloomin' plagues and the post-AIVAS technologists' awaresness that metal is not plentiful in their planet?

Great points!