Technology and Transcendence: The Chaos Times We Live in (Part 1)
Author: Thomas Cajetan
Written in the 47th year of the Fifth Age
Bright star, son of the morning, why have you fallen from heaven?
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Prehistoric Era:The Golden Age of Development
About two thousand years ago, the earliest human colonists landed on the planet in space starships and colonized this planet.
This planet has a gravity of 0.9g, a suitable temperature, a sufficiently thick atmosphere, and an air oxygen content of 23%. It is an Eden-like planet that is absolutely suitable for human colonization.
We call this planet "Helel", which means "Bright Star". It is the place of hope for mankind.
At that time, the planet was populated by a variety of native creatures, such as dwarves, elves, giants, and dragons.
However, relying on their crushing technological advantages, the pioneer colonists successfully established the first colonial base on the planet, naming it "Yerushalaim", which means "Holy Settlement".
At the same time, the pioneer colonists also discovered that the surrounding native creatures were able to use some strange powers.
They call it "extraordinary alien power", namely Ethereal_Xeno_Power.
About two hundred years after humans first took root on this planet, the first demonic tide disaster in recorded history occurred.
The magic tide refers to the magnetic field on the surface of this planet.
There are huge amounts of mysterious minerals buried in the crust below the earth's surface. They constitute the huge magnetic field of the entire planet and are also the source of the extraordinary power of the native creatures.
Demonic tides arise every few hundred years, manifesting as a dramatic increase in the planet's magnetic field.
This enhanced magnetic field will cause all electronic equipment to be completely burned out.
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So far, the entire human civilization has been based on technological civilization.
The inheritance of scientific and technological civilization is essentially the inheritance of information, and information must have a carrier.
The earliest carrier is paper, which is why papermaking and printing are called the key to "the progress of human civilization".
However, the information that paper can store is very limited. Just print out the relevant design documents of a basic manned spacecraft and it can easily be piled up to the height of an average person.
The invention of the Internet and information technology has led to a large number of more convenient electronic carriers replacing paper, which is the so-called "paperless" movement. In an objective sense, it has greatly promoted the accelerated development of science and technology.
However, what would happen if all the electron carriers were burned at the same time?
Naturally, it is a regression of technological civilization.
No matter how great a scientist is, it is impossible to keep all the details of his knowledge in his mind.
How the prehistoric era ended is still unknown to us.
However, what is certain is that from prehistoric times to the First Age, human civilization on this planet experienced a large-scale technological regression.
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Imagine you were a worker in prehistoric times.
One day when you go to work, you find that the production line in the factory has stopped.
The reason is that the chip inside the control center of the automatic production line was burned.
The production team leader went to the warehouse to check and found that all the spare control chips had been burned.
So you have no choice but to go to the equipment supplier to buy a chip, only to find that the call cannot be made because the communication chip has also been burned.
Suppose you are lucky enough that the equipment supplier's factory is right next to your factory, so you walk over and visit.
Then I learned that the equipment supplier's production line has also been shut down, for the same reason as your factory's shutdown.
Since the automatic production line cannot be used, is it okay to operate the photolithography machine manually?
However, the lithography machine could not start at all because the hard drive inside was also burned.
So you can only go to the hard drive supplier...
Going back layer by layer, you finally understand that the modern industrial system is actually a complete machine composed of countless precise links.
The damage of any link will cause the entire link to completely stop.
Not to mention that the magic wave destroyed all electronic equipment, which was equivalent to using a sledgehammer to hit a precision motherboard. Almost every electronic component on it was irreversibly damaged.
Therefore, when the first demonic wave came, the human civilization on this planet fell from the sky like a meteor.
Falling into an abyss of almost no return.
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The First Age: The Chaotic Black Iron Age
There are very few historical records of the entire First Age, even fewer than those of prehistoric times.
As the first era after technological civilization was severely damaged, the First Age was also the most dangerous era for human destiny.
In this era, people have to dig out useful scientific knowledge not only from countless scientists, engineers and production personnel, but also from their minds that still have memories.
You also have to defend the planet from the counterattacks of the native creatures, elves, dwarves, giants and dragons.
Fortunately, low-end military technology is not affected by the magic wave, such as rifles, grenades, rocket launchers and mortars, as long as they do not contain electronic equipment, they can still be used.
At the end of the First Age, most native creatures were wiped out by war.
The half-elves, half-dwarves, giant hybrids, etc. you see now are actually the products of genetic engineering in the First Age or even prehistoric times.
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The Second Age: The Stable Bronze Age
After two rounds of demonic tides, mankind has discovered the best way to deal with the demonic tides.
Re-paper.
Do not trust any electronic equipment, back up all your knowledge on paper, and then lock it in a sealed cabinet that is strictly isolated from oxygen and water.
Without the frequent attacks by native creatures, humans can finally search for the remaining technological relics on the ruins of prehistoric times and the First Age.
This era is also known as the "Ancient Cyrus Era" or the "Technology Renaissance Era". For example, the birth of the first computer operating system "Athena", although not as good as her predecessor "Window", is usable enough——
After all, all information is backed up on paper.
If things continue to develop like this, maybe within a few hundred years, human civilization will hopefully be able to return to the golden prehistoric era.
However, the ugly nature of the human race itself has once again been vividly demonstrated.
When the native creatures that could threaten humanity became extinct, internal strife became the main theme of the world.
The ten-year-long Peloponnesian War was originally a civil war started by various human colonial city-states on the Cyris Peninsula to compete for each other's science and technology.
In turn, it greatly hindered the revival of science and technology. A large number of technical documents were accidentally damaged and lost during the war.
Until the famous Macedonian king, Alexander the Great, reunited the Cyres Peninsula.
Then his troops moved eastward, penetrating through Anatolia, Syria, the Caucasus and the Ilanian Plateau.
We have regained permanent contact with those human colonial city-states that had lost contact since the demon tide.
As a result, human technological civilization once again started the wheel of revival, laying a solid foundation for the rise of the ancient Solomon Republic in the Third Age.