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Most empires did not rise thanks to technological wizardry, and their rulers did not give much thought to technological improvement. The Arabs did not defeat the Sassanid Empire thanks to superior bows or swords, the Seljuks had no technological advantage over the Byzantines, and the Mongols did not conquer China with the help of some ingenious new weapon. In fact, in all these cases the vanquished enjoyed superior military and civilian technology.
Sapiens
Yuval Noah Harari
Finally, interventions in the financial sector to focus capital on intensive, small-scale agriculture and on manufacturing development provide the third key to accelerated economic transformation. The state’s role is to keep money targeted at a development strategy that produces the fastest possible technological learning, and hence the promise of high future profits, rather than on short-term returns and individual consumption.
How Asia Works
Joe Studwell
“Soviet astrophysicist Nicolai Kardashev once proposed that civilizations can be divided into three types based on the power they can command—for communication purposes, let’s say. A Type I civilization can muster an amount of energy equivalent to the total energy output of the Earth. Based on his estimates, the energy output of the Earth is about 1015 to 1016 watts. A Type II civilization can marshal the energy equivalent to the output of a typical star—1026 watts. A Type III civilization’s communication energy can reach 1036 watts, approximately equal to the energy output of a galaxy. Civilization on Earth is currently about a Type 0.7, not even a full Type I. And the transmissions from Red Coast used only about one ten-millionth of the amount of power the Earth could muster. Our call was like the buzzing of a mosquito in the sky. No one could hear it.” “But if Kardashev’s Type II and Type III civilizations really exist, we should be able to hear them.” “We never heard anything during the twenty years that Red Coast was in operation.” “Indeed. Given Red Coast and SETI, could all our efforts ultimately have proven only one thing: In the entire universe, only the Earth has intelligent life?” Ye gave a light sigh. “Theoretically, there may never be a definitive answer to that question. But my sense, and the sense of everyone who went through Red Coast, is that that is the case.”
The Three-Body Problem
Cixin Liu and Ken Liu
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