Could a technological society develop without language?

Swank said:
Imagine a creature with hundreds of limbs, massive brain power and centuries of productive career time. Such an entity would not need assistance and could conceive of an invention and take it to full development while still fully capable
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Yes, societies, civilisations and species, and the biosphere itself are such entities. Aren't they?
 
Montero said:
Different people have different knacks for things.
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Yeah, people. What's the thread topic? Is it possible for aliens to have tech without language. And you haven't refuted my premise in any way by throwing out more anecdotes about people.
Ray Zdybrow said:
Yes, societies, civilisations and species, and the biosphere itself are such entities. Aren't they?
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Entities, yes. But those aren't individuals, which is what I was talking about.



The problem with using human beings as examples is that so many of us are dumb as rocks, and we manage because of social cohesiveness and a minority of smart people. Is it really so incredible to imagine aliens that average a much higher level of intelligence than people?
 
This reminds me of Bronowski's point (I think) in Ascent of Man, which referred to the opposing digit (the thumb) plus a bridge between both sides of the brain plus the tongue allowing for the gift of language, which allowed man to fashion tools and then employ coordinated attacks to take down larger animals, in turn allowing for a surplus of energy which, combined with the two advantages just given, also ensure the ability to become technological creatures and thus take over many other species.

Man's like the "clever girl" raptor but with artificial claws that would eventually become weapons of mass destruction. The primate throws the bone used to kill other primates in the air, which Kubrick segues into spacecraft.

The implication is that an integral part of technology is communication, which allows for passing down of information, coordination, and more.
 
Once I was an adult literacy tutor. My student could read at perhaps a first grade level and had no understanding of math beyond very basic addition and subtraction and no understanding of measurement. One session he walked in with a yard stick in hand. "Tell me how to work this," he said.
Think about it -- he didn't know what an inch was, or a foot and hadn't a clue about fractions. How answer his question?

Words by themselves failed. I finally resorted to tearing strips of paper into pieces. That almost conveyed the technology but I still needed words to explain what I was showing.

Not sure exactly how it applies to this discussion, but it was a startling moment for me. I needed to rethink/invent a "new" form of communication.
 
Swank said:
Yeah, people. What's the thread topic? Is it possible for aliens to have tech without language. And you haven't refuted my premise in any way by throwing out more anecdotes about people.. And you haven't refuted my premise in any way by throwing out more anecdotes about people.
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I was exploring what you were saying by testing it against my practical experience, and in places I was unconvinced. I didn't regard it as being as hard line as refuting a premise, more an invitation to continuing discussion, to convince me. Also it is interesting to see all the different viewpoints popping up in this discussion thread. You have a very different approach to mine, and it is interesting to work through your thinking, and also work out why I am unconvinced.

Swank said:
The problem with using human beings as examples is that so many of us are dumb as rocks, and we manage because of social cohesiveness and a minority of smart people. Is it really so incredible to imagine aliens that average a much higher level of intelligence than people?
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I am not convinced that social cohesiveness is down to the minority of smart people, or at least the chunk of smart people building a technological society - they are frequently geeks and not known for holding a society together. There is a difference between intelligence quota and emotional quota, and the latter is needed in holding a society together more than technological development.
Social cohesiveness has a number of elements, not all due to brains. Checking the definition, I found -
"Although cohesion is a multi-faceted process, it can be broken down into four main components: social relations, task relations, perceived unity, and emotions.[2] Members of strongly cohesive groups are more inclined to participate readily and to stay with the group"
I would also note that societies can continue, or limp along, in many unpleasant ways, with lack of it, out of habit, because it is better than dying. There are many government and corporate systems that could be applied to, at least in part. However that would take the discussion into territory that would probably get the thread shut.
 
Montero said:
I am not convinced that social cohesiveness is down to the minority of smart people, or at least the chunk of smart people building a technological society - they are frequently geeks and not known for holding a society together. There is a difference between intelligence quota and emotional quota, and the latter is needed in holding a society together more than technological development.
Social cohesiveness has a number of elements, not all due to brains. Checking the definition, I found -
"Although cohesion is a multi-faceted process, it can be broken down into four main components: social relations, task relations, perceived unity, and emotions.[2] Members of strongly cohesive groups are more inclined to participate readily and to stay with the group"
I would also note that societies can continue, or limp along, in many unpleasant ways, with lack of it, out of habit, because it is better than dying. There are many government and corporate systems that could be applied to, at least in part. However that would take the discussion into territory that would probably get the thread shut.
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I didn't mean that intelligence is necessary for social cohesiveness. I meant that it works on everyone, which allows everyone to benefit from the tech contributions of the very few.
 
OK. I can see your point that the tech is invented by very few and eventually everyone benefits. It still needs a lot more people to get it to the people who will benefit. As in suppliers of parts, miners of raw materials, factory workers, road layers for the lorries to run on, shippers of the finished product, shops where people actually get their hands on it, or fitters/mechanics/linemen etc to install/deploy it etc. To get a technological society, I think you need a moderately co-operative society. There must be graphs somewhere of rise of technology, showing slow increase as each generation builds tools needed for the next step and suddenly it booms and then you have Victorian onwards consumerism. (At all but the rich estate owning/prosperous merchant levels a modern eye would see 17th century houses as sparsely furnished, then in the boom of the Industrial revolution the new middle classes are filling their rooms with stuff and ornaments, and well now we are onto the plastic toy tsunami.)
Which leads to a related question - how many people need to have access to the technology, for it to be called a technological society? On this planet there are varying levels of access, in the UK you can have as much as you can afford to buy. In rural Africa there is internet access around, but anyone living traditionally may have very little technology in their home and there is far less infrastructure of the UK type across the entire continent - obviously varying with country.
 
Montero said:
OK. I can see your point that the tech is invented by very few and eventually everyone benefits. It still needs a lot more people to get it to the people who will benefit. As in suppliers of parts, miners of raw materials, factory workers, road layers for the lorries to run on, shippers of the finished product, shops where people actually get their hands on it, or fitters/mechanics/linemen etc to install/deploy it etc. To get a technological society, I think you need a moderately co-operative society. There must be graphs somewhere of rise of technology, showing slow increase as each generation builds tools needed for the next step and suddenly it booms and then you have Victorian onwards consumerism. (At all but the rich estate owning/prosperous merchant levels a modern eye would see 17th century houses as sparsely furnished, then in the boom of the Industrial revolution the new middle classes are filling their rooms with stuff and ornaments, and well now we are onto the plastic toy tsunami.)
Which leads to a related question - how many people need to have access to the technology, for it to be called a technological society? On this planet there are varying levels of access, in the UK you can have as much as you can afford to buy. In rural Africa there is internet access around, but anyone living traditionally may have very little technology in their home and there is far less infrastructure of the UK type across the entire continent - obviously varying with country.
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Why can't you have cooperation without language? Animals do it constantly.
 
Swank said:
Why can't you have cooperation without language? Animals do it constantly.
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OK, I said cooperation. Should I think be co-operation, long distance communications and planning. If Smith and Jones in London, need screws from Birmingham, they have to be able to tell Scratchitt in Birmingham to ship some.

That does remind me though I was thinking earlier about bird's nests and how some take a lot of tool using. Beavers can build more effective dams from natural materials than humans - and are very aware of water flow and spot leaks before the humans do.
 
Swank said:
Yeah, people. What's the thread topic? Is it possible for aliens to have tech without language. And you haven't refuted my premise in any way by throwing out more anecdotes about people.

Entities, yes. But those aren't individuals, which is what I was talking about.



The problem with using human beings as examples is that so many of us are dumb as rocks, and we manage because of social cohesiveness and a minority of smart people. Is it really so incredible to imagine aliens that average a much higher level of intelligence than people?
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What are individuals then?
 
For example here are 12 animals that create and use technology without a language as we use the term. So a lot of the question is the semantics of the question.

wildlifeinformer.com

12 Incredible Animals That Use Tools (with Pictures!) - Wildlife Informer

Some animals are clever enough to make use of tools to make their lives easier. Here we learn about 12 types of animals that can use tools.
wildlifeinformer.com wildlifeinformer.com
 
Swank said:
Your choice. People can and do choose to live completely alone. Ants don't.
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If they lived completely alone, it would make no difference whatever technology they came up with, entirely by themselves ( which they couldn't, all of us were born of other people and wouldn't survive very long without the nurture of other people) because they would be the only person who knew about it, it wouldn't affect human society at large and there would be no progression from it.
Many people live alone nowadays and many are isolated from other people, but you can't live in that manner without the society which affords it.
 
Ray Zdybrow said:
If they lived completely alone, it would make no difference whatever technology they came up with, entirely by themselves ( which they couldn't, all of us were born of other people and wouldn't survive very long without the nurture of other people) because they would be the only person who knew about it, it wouldn't affect human society at large and there would be no progression from it.
Many people live alone nowadays and many are isolated from other people, but you can't live in that manner without the society which affords it.
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You are conflating two separate issues: What are individuals? And, can beings without language develop a tech society?

Lone humans show that they are able to live outside of a hive or society and are therefore "individuals". That doesn't mean a lot about humans developing technological society without language, because we have language and generally don't live as hermits. It just answers the question you asked about what qualifies as individual.
 
Science fiction. Insects are hard wired to build nests and get food. Beavers are hard wired to build dams. Perhaps a race of aliens could exist that became hard wired to achieve space flight. The lack of definitions for anything allows a great deal of latitude over what is accomplished. Blue Origin travels to the edge of space for 10 minutes but is billed as space flight. There are planets that are only a couple million miles apart and more as the distance is increased. Couple of months to travel between them. The forerunners of beavers weren't born hard wired to build dams but something happened. Perhaps prehistoric insects were probably hive bound from the get go. A race of aliens that have developed to the point where all they can imagine is traveling to nearby planets, achieving space flight is all that matters, personal habits unrelated to space travel, such as social language and personal desires get weeded out, forgotten, replaced by an all consuming drive to achieve space flight to get to the nearby planets. They started out with social interactive language but dropped it along the way as generation after generation their imagined needs shaped their genetics which evolved into a lifestyle based on technology and that became all that mattered.
 
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