another query

[rm]

More shit I'm thinking about:

Do you believe a society that either lacks, or shuns, mass mechanical production can be technologically advanced?

N.B. -- steampunk is not an answer

Comments

[feyandstrange.livejournal.com]

Many variables, of course. I've got an SF world in which the technology is all biological, and mass production is more like farming as a result. Looks pretty pastoral to human eyes, but engineered plants and critters produce everything that humans would tend to produce mechanically.

I'm not quite sure where community cooperation ends and mass production begins; I suppose when somebody starts to make more than their community needs of a thing to trade it to other communities for things they don't have locally. Hmm. And then there's that whole question of things you need vs. things you just want, and ... I don't think humans are really wired to be non-matrialistic; we're wired to hoard enough to get through the next winter.