We Rarely Lose Technology (2023)

Summary

“Στόλος Ρωμαίων πυρπολῶν τὸν τῶν ἐναντίων στόλον,” i.e. “the fleet of the Romans setting ablaze the fleet of the enemies.” i.e. the Byzantines using their Greek Fire weapon. From the Codex Skylitzes Matritensis (12th century)A common trope in the land of fantasy fiction and games is that of lost technology. The hero stumbles upon some ancient ruins, and then finds an ancient weapon, or an ancient vehicle, or an ancient intelligent robot, that helps him in his quest. Nobody alive could possibly make a new instance of that weapon/vehicle/robot: it was built at a time when technology was far more advanced, a golden age of wisdom and science. In the current age, a dark age, an age of decay, much has been lost; much has been forgotten.This trope is very fun and makes for cool stories. But how much does it match reality? How often do we actually forget the secrets of past technology?As it turns out, not very often at all. And when we do, it’s kind of deliberate. Below, we’ll go over almost every case that is commonly cited as an instance of lost technology, categorized by the way it was (or is purported to have been) lost. But first, we need a working definition of the concept. It seems obvious that lost implies an inability to make something that past people could. This inability could be because some other prerequisite technology is unavailable: if we forgot how to achieve nuclear fission, then nuclear power plants and nuclear weapons would become lost technologies. Perhaps our descendants would discover an ancient nuclear silo and marvel at the ingenuity of their ancestors while being unable to ever replicate it. Did you know that there’s a field of study of long-term nuclear waste warning messages, involving “linguists, archaeologists, anthropologists, materials scientists, science fiction writers, and futurists” with the goal of communicating the danger of nuclear materials to our far future descendants who might have lost the tech and any knowledge of it? But that j...