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[QUOTE]Originally posted by Baloo: [QB] <Speculation> It depends upon the cultural bias that goes along with longevity. If you have a long time to develop an idea, you might feel less pressure to come up with something new than if you have a limited time to make your mark. Somehow I think that the Romulans brought the Vulcan (cultural) characteristic of thoroughness with them when they went into exile. They might have (as with many non-western societies here on Earth) decided that "progress" was less important than perfecting what they had. New ideas aren't very important if the old ones are perceived as adequate, and might be viewed as disruptive of the "natural order" of things. The Japanese [i]had[/i] gunpowder technology during the middle ages, and simply decided that it didn't fit into their scheme of things, so they outlawed the technology until the middle of the 19<SUP>th</SUP> century. Why couldn't the Romulans have had theories that predicted the possibility of FTL travel (or disproved it, for that matter) and simply decided not to pursue the technology, since the technology they had already met their perceived needs. If they were confronted with a race of spacefaring beings who used FTL technology, they might already have had the basic theory worked out and were just waiting for a reason to use it? If they had been space travellers for that many hundreds of years, I would suppose that even if their theories "disproved" the possibility of warp travel, they probably had plenty of speculation on how it might work anyhow. We ourselves possess many theories of how FTL travel might be done, but few ideas regarding how to implement them. In a few hundred years, we still might not know exactly how it could be done, but perhaps if confronted by a race of beings who actually did it, we might gain clues as to how it could be done by examining their technology. The laws of physics are universal, after all. If our understanding of how FTL travel [i]might[/i] be possible was good enough, a working example of the technology might be all we needed to understand how it could be done. Another thing that we humans take for granted is the fact that whenever we discover [b]any[/b] useful technology, we will implement it almost immediately, even if we do not fully understand how it will affect the development of our society or the health of its inhabitants. Asbestos was a good fire-resistant material when it was first discovered. Everything from brake pads to theater curtains to drywall contained asbestos, because it reduced the risk of fire so well. It was a comparatively recent discovery that inhaling asbestos dust could cause (or increase the risk of) cancer. Perhaps the Vulcans (and by extension, the Romulans) have a long-standing tradition of fully exploring the implications of any new technology before they implement it. The reason the Romulans didn't have Warp when first contacted by the Federation might be that they weren't confident that this new technology had no unpleasant side effects. When confronted with a technological society that used that technology, they decided that it was better to risk partially-understood technology than to depend upon the (unproven) good will of strangers. </Speculation> --Baloo PS: This thread sure has a lot of long-winded responses, doesn't it? [IMG]http://solareclipse.net/Forums/biggrin.gif[/IMG] [/QB][/QUOTE]
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