Fine Structure

by qntm

"So, first we thought that there was just some single isolated cataclysm, the Crash. Then we found that there had actually been a second Crash before that, so we called that Crash Two, which set a bad precedent, because then we found Crash Three. And then we found that there had been eight distinct Crashes, and then, just in the last few years, as archaeological science got better, we found that all of the Crashes had happened at roughly the same time. Technologically, I mean. "So civilisation rises from barbarism. From huts to bricks to alchemy to technology to the age of information. And then it plateaus. Technology can only go so far. It stays there. And some factor, some unknown element, builds up and up and up while the world stays otherwise still, and then everything overbalances and suddenly it's the Stone Age. Again. And there is no record of what causes this. Anywhere. At all. There is no electronic data. Every magnetic tape or disc is blank or full of static. Even the best-preserved ones from the most recent generation. The Information Age becomes an informational black spot. Nothing not stored concretely in the form of patterns of ink survives the cataclysm. And there is never any useful information in the ink. It's all irrelevant. There's nothing. "And so nobody remembers. Nobody remembers what caused the Crash and nobody knows how to prepare for it. So it happens again. And again. And... Right now we are just beginning to experiment with mechanical computation...