My intuition is that physical artifact generations are gated at least as much by conceptual blocks and market fit blocks as by manufacture, so that given appropriate knowledge, you could probably easily move 20 year iterations to one year iterations.
My intuition about dependency based knowledge is that it’s an imperfect filter; people have to have some understanding of the previous system of artifacts (though maybe not much about the one before that) in order to effectively use the current system. But 2020 society also contains lots of historians and archaeologists who do have specialized knowledge of historical artifact setups. Smelting bronze isn’t a lost art, and I would guess that metalworking would be a core limiter for getting civilization up and running.
Overall, I’d expect that someone who
(1) knows the details of how a bike works, AND
(2) is motivated to restart their life with a blacksmithing apprenticeship or something
Would be able to invent a bicycle 600 years early, or maybe 550 years early after dedicating their life to it. A random person won’t meet these criteria, but if you import a whole civilization I’d guess you’d get most of that happening, but with a lot (possibly a generation or three?) of delay building up infrastructure.
My intuition is that physical artifact generations are gated at least as much by conceptual blocks and market fit blocks as by manufacture, so that given appropriate knowledge, you could probably easily move 20 year iterations to one year iterations.
My intuition about dependency based knowledge is that it’s an imperfect filter; people have to have some understanding of the previous system of artifacts (though maybe not much about the one before that) in order to effectively use the current system. But 2020 society also contains lots of historians and archaeologists who do have specialized knowledge of historical artifact setups. Smelting bronze isn’t a lost art, and I would guess that metalworking would be a core limiter for getting civilization up and running.
Overall, I’d expect that someone who (1) knows the details of how a bike works, AND (2) is motivated to restart their life with a blacksmithing apprenticeship or something Would be able to invent a bicycle 600 years early, or maybe 550 years early after dedicating their life to it. A random person won’t meet these criteria, but if you import a whole civilization I’d guess you’d get most of that happening, but with a lot (possibly a generation or three?) of delay building up infrastructure.