FoxtrotDeltaTango"I was made for WAR, not scratching text into wax tablets š"
empireOfLove2The reason Roman legions were as successful as they were was because of Romeās bureaucracy and logisitical efficiency. Their road network existed to allow legion and their food trains to go anywhere in the empire unrestricted.
Same reason that the US military has been as successful as it has in WWII and at least some part of the 20th century- itās never about tactics, itās about mastering industrial logistics to move any gear, any where, with a dayās notice.
Yes. The Romans would have fucking KILLED for Excel.
MinnesotaGoddamTheir road network existed to allow legion and their food trains to go anywhere in the empire unrestricted.
oh donāt get me started. The success of the entire roman empire was the roads and infrastructure (also aqueduct but less so). You can trace the success and growth of civilization to transportation technology. Direct correlation, close enough and rational enough (i havenāt run the numbers but Iām confident making an ass out of myself) Iām willing to say itās causative. The biggest change weāve seen has been computers, and integrating that fully into transportation (which we still havenāt done. because itās nigh fucking impossible to get computers and humans to drive together safely. itās almost like we need a new transportation revolution) will overhaul society. however we do it.
GrailPutting computers on wheels was always a terrible idea. Computers go on rails. Weāre failing to overhaul society because weāre using wheels where we should be using rails.
Reading the comments above, I wasnāt even done before I was imagined how to write this exact response lol. Guess Iāll contribute this instead:
Roads are for local human freedom, rails are for proper logistics, which is where you want your computers integrated as much as possible. People donāt realize that in WW2, most of the distance travelled by tanks was on trains, not by their own power which is very resource intensive.
my favorite fictional transportation invention was by Jasper Fforde. If youāve read his Shades of Grey series (itās the You Canāt See Color series, not the Bad BDSM series, and actually good to read. my favorite books right now) itās basically a very very fancy conveyor belt that has higher speed lanes (like 50mph lanes) as you get toward the center, and all you do is step on and whoosh off from Reading to Cardiff. Except itās also made of gel and eats people if they fall asleep on it. Science fiction and stuff.
Except itās also made of gel and eats people if they fall asleep on it.
You sure this isnāt a vore spinoff of the twilight spinoff ?
I havenāt actually read twilight or the bad bdsm one so like Iām not 100 percent sure, but if it is itās at least got a good sense of humor about it
conveyor belt that has higher speed lanes
by Jasper Fforde
Asimov was writing about that kind of thing in The Caves of Steel a decade before Fforde was born, and almost fifty years before Fforde published his first novel.
Arthur C. Clarke used moving walkways in Against the Fall of Night (later rewritten as The City and the Stars) in 1948.
Heinlein wrote The Roads Must Roll in 1940.
Fritz Langās Metropolis depicted moving walkways on film in 1927.
H.G. fucking Wells used them in 1887 and 1889 in A Story of the Days to Come and When the Sleeper Wakes.
But he didnāt invent them either. The first moving walkway was designed and built in 1893 by Joseph Lyman Silsbee.
Moving walkways have been in science fiction since the very beginning.
Iām frankly surprised Verne didnāt invent them in Paris in the Twentieth Century, but thatās probably more futurism than science fiction, so he wrote about asphalt, and cars, and gas stations, and high speed trains, and elevators, and fax machines, and something quite close to the Internet. In 1860. But, alas, no moving walkways.
We already got people conveyors. Iām talking about fancy people eating people conveyors
? my 1980s car had a computer in it and she was great. computer didnāt try to drive. it was just a little box the same size as the radio, just under the passenger seat. nowadays i donāt even know where all the computer shit is itās how much of the driving experience is taken over by the computer. i got a lot more safety shit now, which i appreciate (iāve been saved from a couple massive pileups in the fog because the adaptive cruise control sensors told me there was a car before i could see it with my eyes, even though i was already driving slower) but like, we agree with You that letting the computer take over 100% is bad.
the help computers give? iām not going to turn it down. iām a shitty driver.
That seems like it implies humans are better on wheels, even though youāve taken an anti-wheel stance in general.
because itās nigh fucking impossible to get computers and humans to drive together safely. itās almost like we need a new transportation revolution) will overhaul society.
Or we could just build a rail network and avoid the problem
and yet that doesnāt happen. itās about time yāall start figuring out what will
Guillotining all the car lobbyists would work, but thatās frowned upon
Okay, RoughRomanMemes is fully leaking at this point.
I guess it depends how you define civilisation. Usually āthey left momuments for us to findā is close to what gets used, which of course is going to correlate strongly with transportation.
(also aqueduct but less so)
It bugs me that after all the effort they put into aqueducts and sewers, they still ended up with a typical ancient parasite load, probably from unclean public baths and garum.
donāt forget their shit still stank and we blame them for it
Hell, Napoleon put out a massive bounty on the invention of canning. The idea had been shown theoretically possible and he understood what a massive logistical edge he would get from the ability to ship food other than hard tack with his armies. Before canned goods war didnāt just kill soldiers, soldiers pillaged the countryside (regardless of whose side they were on) for food.
People really underestimate how difficult it has been historically to actually feed armies. Even today the US is doing wild crap like establishing fast food chain restaurants in military bases and making sure that continental US food is available in South Korea and Guam to ensure morale is maintained.
and making sure that continental US food is available in South Korea and Guam to ensure morale is maintained.
I get that not everybody is adventurous, but damn, the idea that youāre deployed in the military, and your big problem is that you have to eat ribs as galbi instead of with a rub from home.
I donāt think the guys getting PTSD fighting Picts on the Isles cared much about logistics beyond ensuring they had something to eat and equipment to use. Iām sure I donāt have to tell you that Romans were a lot of different people but I just take umbrage with the wording (more from the OP image). The idea of labeling all Romans by the heights of their exemplars.
Like, the US has a lot of well-regarded universities but we wouldnāt call Americans a learned people; a country of skilled doctors and exacting engineers.