A subset of SimpleInventions. Bootstrap technology refers to those techniques, ideas, practices and inventions, tangible and intangible, which do not require a pre-existing industrial, technological nor technical base to develop, but rather are essential to the development of just such an advanced industrial, technological and technical base.
For example, though paper clips are simple inventions, they can't be part of a bootstrap technology base since they require precision wire extrusion which belongs to advanced metalsmithing.
The bootstrap technology found in the minds of every advanced human being is so extensive that civilization could be completely rebuilt in a matter of a couple of centuries. Not on our planet though since Earth has long since exhausted all easily accessible resources.
Here is just part of the bootstrap technology found in every one of a billion human minds:
- skids
- wheels
- wheel barrows
- wagons
- needles
- knives
- hammers
- ropes
- pots
- spears
- arrowheads
- walls
- ramps
- lifts
- containers
- collections
- paths
- money
- social hierarchy
- herding
- agriculture !!
- plowing
- milling
- water wheels
- horse-riding
- housing
- permanent housing
- history
- intentional invention
- settlements
- property
- cities
- sewers
- toilets
- aqueducts
- specialization
- trading
- surface mining (ie, digging)
- writing
- alphabetic writing
- arithmetic
- syllogisms
- comedies, tragedies
- art, music, perspective painting
- rationalism
- materialism
- scientific atheism
- individual freedom
- egalitarianism
And especially,
- language
- names (a separate invention from language)
- hygiene,
- taking care of children, where the following were all separate inventions:
- feeding children when they're hungry
- changing diapers when they're soiled (not invented until a few centuries ago)
- not swaddling infants (invented by the Puritans)
- refraining from sexually molesting infants
- refraining from sexually abusing children
- paying attention to children (actively abusing them instead of utterly neglecting them)
- not beating children to death
- not whipping children
- not beating children
- the idea that children are not evil
- not sacrificing infants and children to gods (Romans had this invention, Carthaginians did not)
- not killing infants
- not casually abandoning infants (invented by the Christians)
- raising your own children
- children aren't slaves nor servants (an invention that still hasn't made its way to some cultures)
- children are people
- and many, many more
- affection,
- love (LoveIsNotAnInstinct)
- walking upright (though that might have been invented by pre-humans)
- sex
- consciousness (even if you don't go by OriginOfConsciousness)
- the ego
- empathy
- laughter
Related
Bootstrap Technology