The reason Roman legions were as successful as they were was because of Rome’s 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- it’s never about tactics, it’s about mastering industrial logistics to move any gear, any where, with a day’s notice.

Yes. The Romans would have fucking KILLED for Excel.

Their road network existed to allow legion and their food trains to go anywhere in the empire unrestricted.

oh don’t 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 haven’t run the numbers but I’m confident making an ass out of myself) I’m willing to say it’s causative. The biggest change we’ve seen has been computers, and integrating that fully into transportation (which we still haven’t done. because it’s nigh fucking impossible to get computers and humans to drive together safely. it’s almost like we need a new transportation revolution) will overhaul society. however we do it.

Putting computers on wheels was always a terrible idea. Computers go on rails. We’re failing to overhaul society because we’re using wheels where we should be using rails.

Reading the comments above, I wasn’t even done before I was imagined how to write this exact response lol. Guess I’ll 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 don’t 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 you’ve read his Shades of Grey series (it’s the You Can’t See Color series, not the Bad BDSM series, and actually good to read. my favorite books right now) it’s 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 it’s also made of gel and eats people if they fall asleep on it. Science fiction and stuff.

Except it’s also made of gel and eats people if they fall asleep on it.

You sure this isn’t a vore spinoff of the twilight spinoff ?