🧵 Untitled Thread
Anonymous at Mon, 16 Sep 2024 13:44:59 UTC No. 16383125
If a colony of modern humans (as in, more than enough of them to sustain a stable non-interbreeding population) were transported to a copy of Earth that is more or less identical to ours minus any existing human civilisation or technology, supplied with the collective knowledge of every technological advancement from fire to the modern day, how short a time could it take them to manufacture a single smartphone?
This is a theoretical situation where there's no infighting, cultural divisions, natural disasters, plagues or whatever to significantly hinder their work, and they aren't being forced to work unhealthy amounts of time every day.
For example, with the right knowledge of materials and how to use them it's possible to set up furnaces and basic smelting 'equipment' within a week, even a day with a lot of people working on them, but you won't exactly be able to make precision instruments immediately.
Anonymous at Mon, 16 Sep 2024 16:29:01 UTC No. 16383415
>>16383125
around 2 weeks
Anonymous at Mon, 16 Sep 2024 16:45:37 UTC No. 16383446
10-20 years if they solely focused on getting it set up, maybe?
Anonymous at Mon, 16 Sep 2024 16:55:10 UTC No. 16383468
knowledge is useless without skill
Anonymous at Mon, 16 Sep 2024 16:57:20 UTC No. 16383473
>>16383468
Some skill is knowledge. Homo. Intelligence is Data / Skill. Survival is Skill / Data. Knowledge is 1/16th of survival.
Anonymous at Mon, 16 Sep 2024 16:59:06 UTC No. 16383475
>>16383473
(Basically 1 skill - rest data
In meta category: Skill / Data)
Anonymous at Mon, 16 Sep 2024 17:17:52 UTC No. 16383505
>>16383125
one should break down the manufacturing of a smartphone. from every machine and tool needed to build each component and deduce it until it reaches tools which can be build by humans in nature without any tools. dosent seems too hard to break it down but seems to be very time intensive.
Anonymous at Mon, 16 Sep 2024 17:22:06 UTC No. 16383512
>>16383125
define modern humans?
Anonymous at Mon, 16 Sep 2024 18:28:54 UTC No. 16383622
>>16383505
>dosent seems too hard to break it down but seems to be very time intensive.
That's kinda the main question - starting from scratch is the second biggest nerf a society could have, the first would be having no knowledge of how to maintain (or initiate) it.
The very first step would be getting tools, like you said it would start with using literal rocks to cut down trees, using plant fibres to make cord, charring wood for charcoal for better fires and baking pottery etc.
Anonymous at Mon, 16 Sep 2024 23:10:36 UTC No. 16383920
>>16383512
oooof, here we go
Anonymous at Mon, 16 Sep 2024 23:19:06 UTC No. 16383930
Anonymous at Mon, 16 Sep 2024 23:33:15 UTC No. 16383938
In a world with no domesticated plants or animals and a huge group of human with literally 0 survival skills(apart from theory) and 0 supplies it would be unironically over, they would all die. You vastly underestimate the amount of skill it would take to feed these people. Maybe if they had a few months of training beforehand a subgroup would survive, but would have no time/energy surplus(no agriculture, and no plants to do so with) to focus on such things and the knowledge would mostly die out in a few generations. If they could bring modern supplies with( i.e. tools, seed, writing materials), dunno would depend on how well the societal structure can pass on the directive to the following generations.
>This is a theoretical situation where there's no infighting, cultural divisions, natural disasters, plagues or whatever to significantly hinder their work, and they aren't being forced to work unhealthy amounts of time every day.
lol, this makes the scenario meaningless
Anonymous at Tue, 17 Sep 2024 00:33:41 UTC No. 16383988
>>16383125
With a few thousands of males and females who have engineering knowledge and and least the handy skills of OP's pic? They could probably build usable analog radios in a few months to a year but it would be huge spark-gap types for Morse code. Still usable and allows long-range comms.
Anonymous at Tue, 17 Sep 2024 00:37:58 UTC No. 16383995
>>16383125
It depends. Are they African?
Anonymous at Tue, 17 Sep 2024 06:47:05 UTC No. 16384274
>>16383938
This. You'd have to prep these people for the complete food scarcity they're about to be plunged into or the breeding group will start to dwindle in weeks. The only accessible food is undomesticated fruit/veg and wild hunt, which is absolutely liveable but it's a full-time job and nothing like modern farming. Progress on this front would also need to be measured in centuries- developing agriculture is not just a question of collecting wild seeds and planting them in some patch of dust. With concentrated effort by botanists maybe you could get something useable in a few dozen years instead of a thousand.
Anonymous at Tue, 17 Sep 2024 07:34:06 UTC No. 16384300
>>16383125
>>16383938
>>16384274
Current population levels were only possible after agriculture, so the premise to transplant a post-agriculture population density to a planet without agriculture in place is kind of unfair.
That said maybe we could survive a couple years on hunting mammals totally unprepared for us, or maybe on fishing. But putting agriculture in place should probably be a priority all the while.
Anonymous at Tue, 17 Sep 2024 07:41:06 UTC No. 16384302
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semic
good luck
I think we're gonna need a more rigorous definition of "smartphone". If you really wanted you could make a pseudo smartphone with tube electronics and a primitive radio mesh network. But a real smartphone has GPS which depends on satellites, so now you don't need just semiconductor manufacturing but also putting shit into LEO.
Anonymous at Tue, 17 Sep 2024 08:05:38 UTC No. 16384320
>>16383125
is the guy in the picture on board? then yes.
Anonymous at Tue, 17 Sep 2024 08:37:40 UTC No. 16384338
>>16383125
An important number is missing: how many of them.
Before making smartphones they would have to first build the infrastructure for their living necessities, housing water food etc.
Only after that you can have minining and furnaces for metals, plastics production, a huge variety of materials and tools, I don't think you realize how diversified is the industrial production, and it's all needed.
Even if they are millions of people it would take at least decades before having microelectronics, with just a few thousands there is simply no way. They first need to grow in number and conserve the knowledge.
Anonymous at Tue, 17 Sep 2024 16:31:50 UTC No. 16384805
>>16383125
Depends a lot on how educated they were, carrying a bunch of books wont do much.
Most people in this so-called colony will have to busy themselves with hunting and building somewhat in excess of their own needs, to support a smaller group of people that needs to work in these technological projects full time.
Normally they would organize this with a bank. They would set up a market to sell their squirrel meat, and the proceeds saved in a bank, which could decide then to fund tech startups, such as "copper"
Anonymous at Tue, 17 Sep 2024 22:59:26 UTC No. 16385266
>>16384338
Also modern minning has discovered and used up all the near surface ores and oil, so unless this scenario is of an 'untouched' planet it would be significantly harder to aquire most metals and hydrocarbons. Oil used to give a ratio of 1:30 energy return per drilling investment, today it is more like 1:7
Anonymous at Wed, 18 Sep 2024 21:33:05 UTC No. 16386749
>>16383125
>If a colony of modern humans (as in, more than enough of them to sustain a stable non-interbreeding population) were transported to a copy of Earth that is more or less identical to ours minus any existing human civilisation or technology, supplied with the collective knowledge of every technological advancement from fire to the modern day, how short a time could it take them to manufacture a single smartphone?
We have this discussion regularly.
Last time, it was estimated stone age to atomic age in 50 years, and the rest mostly as it evolved. That makes for 100 - 150 years.
Anonymous at Thu, 19 Sep 2024 06:03:56 UTC No. 16387155
Theres currently ATM entire countries of tens of millions of people that cannot feed themselves or manufacture anything.
As an example: Egypt.
Tell Egypt to manufacture smartphones, and to make the machines too. See how that goes.
Anonymous at Thu, 19 Sep 2024 06:34:02 UTC No. 16387186
>>16384338
This, but the most important factor is there being enough people to necessitate smartphones in the first place.
Anonymous at Thu, 19 Sep 2024 08:53:28 UTC No. 16387367
One immortal person could not do it even with a billion years to do so. Such project would require hundreds of machines, and you cant just build one and go build the other, as they would rot/rust, you need a large population to maintain machines as they are being built and a larger population to work and save money/resources to basically give it to the nerds as investment in the smartphone project so that they can work on that full time
Anonymous at Thu, 19 Sep 2024 08:54:34 UTC No. 16387369
>>16383415
/thread