[OT] [I mean totally OT] Re: What can you "new"

[Walter Bright]

Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
> Walter Bright wrote:
>> Wouldn't the wheel be useless to a hunter-gatherer tribe?
> Not for transporting the hunt.

Consider making a wheel (and corresponding cart) with nothing but stone 
tools to work with, and your materials are rope, leather, and wood. No 
fasteners. A workable cart with wheel would be very heavy. I think it 
would be fairly useless without a road and oxen to pull it.

> By and large, such mental exercises are indeed showing how dependent 
> everything in modern life is on infrastructure. Our major achievements 
> (electricity, automobiles, computers) cannot be fathomed absent a major 
> infrastructure.

Even writing has its problems. What are you going to write on? Bark? 
Animal hides? How are you going to make paper? Ink? A hunter-gatherer 
tribe may find it not worth the effort, and so the writing will not "take".