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

[00goddess.livejournal.com]

I have read sci-fi stories about technologically advanced societies that chose to shun mechanical mass production, but they were all highly futuristic- i.e. those people were far in our future, and had perhaps come out the other side of mass production.

These are societies that valued the handmade, the artisanal, and also felt it important that people have valuable work to do. I honestly think it's the kind of place I would like to live.

The thing is, they would never have gotten there were it not for the past behind them, one of great mass-production, which basically gave them the luxury to choose the way their society would run.

Some years ago I read (non-fiction, in NG or SciAm or some such) about an African tribe that made a huge amount of money off of oil rights or some such. The tribe became quite wealthy, and they actually had people helping them and wise leaders, so they didn't squander it all on hookers and blow. The chief really wanted to make things better for the tribe, so one of the first things he did was spend money building permanent buildings for them, buildings with concrete floors and metal walls/roofs, replacing the leaf-thatch buildings they had had before, which always needed to be replaced/repaired.

The new buildings were a disaster. They were not as well-ventilated as the thatch buildings were, so the people got hot and sick. When it rained they were horribly noisy. And all the women in the tribe got vaginal infections and UTIs from sitting on the concrete floors. There were other problems too, which led the chief to decide to scrap the new buildings and go back to thatch.

I thought it was a fascinating story, one that stuck with me, and your question made it leap to mind.