Discussion Main / BambooTechnology

Should this trope be No Real Life Examples, Please!?

While Minecraft may have some elements that could qualify as "bamboo technology", making buildings, tools and furniture out of wood or stone certainly don't. These materials are not only feasible for these purposes, they are quite commonly used for them in the real world. Since Minecraft allows you to build nearly limitlessly different things, and since the physics in it are whacky to say the least, lots of thing built in the game could potentially fall under this category. Anything containing redstone, however, probably wouldn't qualify, since redstone is quite obviously magical in nature (it's a fantasy game after all).

As to the War Hammer40k Orks' Bamboo Tech, a friend explained it to me thusly (I'm paraphrasing from shaky, spotty, incomplete memory):

Their tech operates partly on belief. If you were to give them an empty suitcase, and convinced them that it's a Doomsday Device, they'd believe you. When they attempt to activate it, and find that it's NOT in fact Made of Explodium, once they'd opened it up, they'd be like "Well, no wonder it didn't blow up, there's no detonator, no explosives, no nuclear reactor/heavy fissionables, no Big Red Button!", etc., but each discovery of what's missing would be its own step of "Why didn't it blow up?", opening it up, & then "Well, no wonder!..." Then, they'd promptly rectify such oversights, thereby turning an ordinary empy suitcase into a doomsday device because they believe it to be one.

Admittedly, it was a whole heck of a lot funnier the way he told it, when he told it.

Most examples in real life are of modern electronics with a bamboo trim/case/etc I think these are not actual examples of the trope

No mention of minecraft? Surely it has something that falls under this trope.

I removed this Philip José Farmer example. There is no inexplicable technology in the series based on bamboo and the like — as the comments indicated the non-stone-aged tech only occurs where metal is available, it's a big plot point.

• The Riverworld novels by Philip Jose Farmer. The entire human race is resurrected on the banks of a twenty-million-mile-long river with no tools except what they can cobble out of bamboo and fish (and the occasional human corpse). They end up making large boats, balloons, and almost-industrial societies.
  • It has to be admitted, though, that the powers that be provide the resurrectees not only with food but also occasional other amenities, such as razors, cloth, soap and whatnot. The only thing definitely lacking on Riverworld is metal.
    • Book 2 of the series introduces this metal in the form of an asteroid and the conflicts that arise when various factions realize what they can do with it.

As written, there's no way to know how this is an example. Since it's real world it is essentially impossible to be an example because the trope is technology that works despite being crudely made of (comically, absurdly, in real-life, nonfunctional) low-tech components.

Not an example. Bamboo furniture is just fine and dandy regular low-tech stuff.

• The Sims: The expansion pack House Party featured a whole set of furniture made out of bamboo.◊

Apart from the natter and Example Indentation problems, not an example. If gods or other magic get involved then all bets are off. This trope is for technology that somehow works despite being made of bamboo and the like.

• Touhou:
  • While not technology, the inhabitants of Gensokyo constructed a moon rocket to visit the Lunar Capital in the Silent Sinner in Blue official manga. It had normal windows that could be opened from the inside while in-flight, a chimney, artificial gravity and air, somehow, and was constructed mostly of wood.
  • Wild and Horned Hermit features a bamboo not-quite-technology cold-fusion reactor.
  • To be fair, both these examples only work because they run on gods.
    • Not to mention that the cold fusion reactor was only built because there were problems with the previosu attempt at nuclear fusion, which also involved a god.' Specifically, feeding a dead sun god to a hell raven - who is very much the Hell of Blazing Fire's counterpart to a certain ice fairy...

These are not examples. This trope is not primitive tools being used to make slightly less primitive tools an so on until sophisticated tools are made. That's the opposite of the trope. This trope is missing all those steps and going directly from the basics to stuff that by rights needs a whole technological civilization: carving a supercomputer from whalebone, flying a a jet made from wood fueled with palm oil, built without access to so much as a lathe.

• One of the many Dragonlance books had an exiled dwarf happy he found a bunch of metal scrap. Granted, he couldn't build anything important with it. But he could build the tools which would then allow him to build important stuff.
  "There is only one thing you can forge without a hammer - a hammer itself. Of course, it would be very crude hammer, but with it, you could make a somewhat better one. And with it, you could make one even better, unless you have a good hammer. And with good hammer, you can make a good sword..."
• Discworld: All a dwarf needs is fire and metal. Then he can make simple tools. And with simple tools he can make complex tools, and with complex tools a dwarf can make anything.

Would an ornithopter qualify? An ornithopter, by the way, is a flying machine that uses flapping wings to fly. Technically, getting one of these to work in real life would be impossible. So if someone were to actually fly using an ornithopter, would that be bamboo technology?