In Gun, Germs and Steel, Diamond comments briefly on technological stagnation and regression in small human populations (mostly in relation to Australian aborigines). I don’t know if there is much theoretical basis for this, but he suggests that it is likely that the required population size to support even quite basic agricultural technology is much larger than the minimum genetically viable population.
So even if knowledge isn’t explicitly destroyed in a catastrophe, if humanity is reduced to small groups of subsistence farmers then it seems probable that the technological level they can utilize will be much lower than that of the preceding society (although probably higher than the same population level without a proceeding society). The lifetime of unmaintained knowledge is also limiting factor—books and digital media may degrade before the new civilisation is ready to make use of them (unless they plan ahead to maintain them). But I agree that this is all very speculative.
This makes sense. If 99% of humanity dies, the surviving groups might not be well-connected by transportation and trade. Modern manufacturing starts with natural resources from one country, assembles its products in the next, and ships and sells to a third. But if e.g. ships and planes can’t get fuel or maintenance, then international trade fails, supply chains break down, and survivors can’t utilize the full capacity of technology.
As gavintaylor says below, industrialization might need a critical mass of wealth to begin. (Maybe accumulated wealth affords freedom from sustenance work and allows specialization of labor?)
Though over thousands of years, the knowledge that progress is possible might end up encouraging people to rebuild the lost infrastructure.
In Gun, Germs and Steel, Diamond comments briefly on technological stagnation and regression in small human populations (mostly in relation to Australian aborigines). I don’t know if there is much theoretical basis for this, but he suggests that it is likely that the required population size to support even quite basic agricultural technology is much larger than the minimum genetically viable population.
So even if knowledge isn’t explicitly destroyed in a catastrophe, if humanity is reduced to small groups of subsistence farmers then it seems probable that the technological level they can utilize will be much lower than that of the preceding society (although probably higher than the same population level without a proceeding society). The lifetime of unmaintained knowledge is also limiting factor—books and digital media may degrade before the new civilisation is ready to make use of them (unless they plan ahead to maintain them). But I agree that this is all very speculative.
This makes sense. If 99% of humanity dies, the surviving groups might not be well-connected by transportation and trade. Modern manufacturing starts with natural resources from one country, assembles its products in the next, and ships and sells to a third. But if e.g. ships and planes can’t get fuel or maintenance, then international trade fails, supply chains break down, and survivors can’t utilize the full capacity of technology.
As gavintaylor says below, industrialization might need a critical mass of wealth to begin. (Maybe accumulated wealth affords freedom from sustenance work and allows specialization of labor?)
Though over thousands of years, the knowledge that progress is possible might end up encouraging people to rebuild the lost infrastructure.