How to Downsize a Transport Network: The Chinese Wheelbarrow (2011) • Hacker News Board

Re: How to Downsize a Transport Network: The Chinese Wheelbarrow (2011)

#11

Post by vidarh » Fri, Jan 10, 2014, 7:55 PM UTC

riffraff wrote: post #5

I am unconvinced by "The Europeans[..]did not adapt and subsequently lost the option of smooth land transportation for almost one thousand years." By the subsequent text, "Roman road infrastructure remained relatively useful until about the 11th century AD" and they started building them again in the late middle age. The middle ages by definition in the 15th century so the 11th is already near the late middle age. Mo…

> But that is also true of the chinese ones.

The article claims that this was only the case on the eastern plains, and that large parts of the network of paths in China actually were paved.

Re: How to Downsize a Transport Network: The Chinese Wheelbarrow (2011)

#12

Post by VladRussian2 » Fri, Jan 10, 2014, 8:31 PM UTC

riffraff wrote: post #5

I am unconvinced by "The Europeans[..]did not adapt and subsequently lost the option of smooth land transportation for almost one thousand years." By the subsequent text, "Roman road infrastructure remained relatively useful until about the 11th century AD" and they started building them again in the late middle age. The middle ages by definition in the 15th century so the 11th is already near the late middle age. Mo…

>I am unconvinced by "The Europeans[..]did not adapt and subsequently lost the option of smooth land transportation for almost one thousand years."

>By the subsequent text, "Roman road infrastructure remained relatively useful until about the 11th century AD" and they started building them again in the late middle age. The middle ages by definition in the 15th century so the 11th is already near the late middle age.

it isn't that Roman roads disappeared as physical artefacts - they are still there. It is the long-distance trade using this roads under protection of unified Roman Empire stopped. Similarly like long distance trade blooming under Mongol Empire (without any noticeable road infrastructure) had decreased significantly with Mongol Empire breaking up.

Re: How to Downsize a Transport Network: The Chinese Wheelbarrow (2011)

#13

Post by mikepurvis » Fri, Jan 10, 2014, 8:41 PM UTC

potatolicious wrote: post #8

pgrote wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting. Wouldn't having a lasting archive of previous knowledge and advancements prevent another dark age? In the past, most knowledge was transferred among people verbally or located in geographically separate areas.

Preservation of knowledge itself is insufficient to prevent things from being lost. It's something the US is dealing with, particularly in military and aerospace. You stop doing something long enough and, despite having schematics and documentation around, nobody is left that actually knows how to do it. See for example the retirement of the Space Shuttle and the resumption of classical capsule-based spacecraft, we'r…

Coordination is huge, too—most things have a huge number of upstream dependencies. Knowing how to build advanced circuits is of little use if the chip foundries can't make semiconductors and ship them to you.

Re: How to Downsize a Transport Network: The Chinese Wheelbarrow (2011)

#14

Post by antman » Sat, Jan 11, 2014, 11:47 AM UTC

analyst74 wrote: post #4

An interesting fact I learnt from the article is that both European and Chinese went backwards in terms of infrastructure at some point. So maybe dark age is not a singular historical event, and could re-occur in the future?

It never was a singular event. In the late Bronze Age there was a darker age. Complex social structures collapsed, technologies forgotten for eight centuries and the population to some regions reduced to 1/9 of its former size.