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this post was submitted on 04 Dec 2023
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Asklemmy
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I mean, tune it just right and you can get the Industrial Revolution started a couple millenia early and maybe bypass the whole colonialism nonsense. Middle ages is too late, too much theocracy. Common knowledge gets you in grecorroman spaces, but maybe you can overshoot a touch and get some nice Phoenician traders to bankroll your plan to mass produce bycicles or Ikea-style furniture and ship it all over the Mediterranean.
Just... hope you stay healthy or that the rules let you pack a bunch of antibiotics. Or maybe learn a bunch of modern medicine before you go. Maybe prioritize the whole "discovering penicillin" thing when you get there.
Thing is, industrial revolution bleeds into colonialism. Sure, there was colonialism before industrialization, and colonialism would look very different in a time before nation-states as we know them today, but those resources will have to come from somewhere.
Metallurgy is always where they get you on these things. You can bring stuff like division of labor, assembly lines, and replaceable parts back in time pretty easily, but good luck getting aluminum for your bicycles in any kind of quantity. Not sure how well a bronze bicycle would work, but I bet it could be done.
A steel bycicle will surely work.
The problem with all of it is going to be scale. I think you're right in that you think you can just jump into the technology bit in these Yankee in King's Arthur's Court scenarios and instead you'd probably get stuck trying to revolutionize mining and material science and then die from an ingrown toenail.
Which, to his credit, Twain absolutely covers when he does the thought experiment. I'm constantly impressed that his take was "you'd cherry pick the people that are open minded enough and spend the rest of your life trying to set up an education system only to be chased away regardless because politics is a bitch".
That's still probably the right answer.