“Finally, let’s talk “screen saver” technologies and skills. These are things that are so vital to everyday life that they slip from our consciousness unless we have clear reasons to still pay attention”
“There’s a “rule of threes” here; a healthy human can maybe survive, usually, three weeks without food, three days without water, and three minutes without air. People and things that help keep air and water and food coming on schedule can become so basic we assume they will always be there and unless we are intentional about remembering, the tendency to forget them is huge”
“Water – cleaning, carrying, washing, taking away filth”
“Food – growing, harvesting, processing, cooking, feeding, cleaning up, by-products”
“Protection from the elements – heat, cold, wind, pollution, too wet, too dry”
“We do a few things for sure in life:
• We are born • We love • We carry stuff around a lot • We die”
“What vital, invisible skills do those things imply?”
“How is pregnancy and labor and delivery viewed? How are newborns cared for? What relationships are cultivated?”
“What do we make to carry things and are there cultural rules around who carries what? How do we track where things are?”
“Who cares for the sick and dying? What do we do with dead bodies? How do we mark all these occasions, the being born and loving and moving things and dying?”
“Think about how vulnerable people in our world are cared for or not, how disruptive people are regarded and held with compassion or not, how desperate people are made welcome or not. Do you want to replicate that in a world you create? Why? The steady beat I return to is “where have I not looked” and then I try to look there. If some voices seem to be missing from the story, from the world, where are they?”
“Reading List”
”The Fabric of Civilization – Virginia Postrel”
”If Walls Could Talk – Lucy Worsley”
“The Domestic Revolution – Ruth Goodman”
”A History of Private Life – ed. Phillippe Aries”
”Life in a Medieval Village – Joseph and Frances Gies”
“When There Is No Doctor – Werner, Thuman, & Maxwell”
”Dream Babies – Christina Hardyment”
”EMS– American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons”
”Weapon: A Visual History of Arms and Armor – Roger Ford”
”S.E.X. – Heather Corinna”
”Seven Daughters of Eve – Bryan Sykes”
“How To Invent Everything – Ryan North”
“Just the Questions, Please
• What do people in your world spin? How is it gathered? • Who does the work? Who profits? • What does that imply about social structure? • Where do they get fiber to spin for thread? • How do they make cloth? • Do they need processing in some way first? • Soaked in something to make them pliable? • Pounded to break down and draw out the fibers? • What’s the cheaper plant fiber the [trollherds] wear while they are tending the [trolls[ for the high-value fiber? • What makes [trollwool] more valuable? • How do people record stuff in your world? • Tiny clay tablets? Lead seals? Carved in bamboo? • Wax poured in wooden trays? • In your world-building, whose words are kept? • How is history held and passed down? Who does that? • What is considered worth noting? • What gets lost because whoever comes after dismisses some voices as “less important”, “less reliable”, or “less worthy?”
“Clothing
• What laws show up around fabric in your world? • Are there rules about who gets to wear what? • Why might someone steal a garment?”
“Babies
• Does the society you’re building value in terms of the most vulnerable people, the very young and very old, and how are the people who care for them treated? • Do infants stay with their parents, as a biologically related nursing pair? • Is cross-nursing between families common or strange? • Are there wet-nurses, whose sole job is breastfeeding babies? • If infants are sent to wet-nurses, why? • What ways does your world support breastfeeding parent-child pairs, and if it doesn’t, why not?”
“Washing
• How do people in your world deal with their waste water? • What do people use to clean and dry their bodies and clothing? • Is washing the body or clothing considered private or communal? What are the taboos and traditions around washing?”
“Staying Healthy
• How do the people in your imagined world handle routine infection and common injury? • Who has access to medical care? • How does the world you imagine handle large scale epidemics?”
“Technology
• Who has access to it? Who uses it? Who holds its secrets? • Is it held by artisan-priests? Controlled by the state? Passed down through family lines? • What does that imply about family and social structure? • What wealth is connected to which parts of producing thread? • Do people grow and spin and weave and dye and sew their own clothing, or is some part of that work done by other people? • What does that imply about craft specialization and division of labor? • What are all of the attendant technologies and tools people doing those tasks would need? • What else needs to be nearby to ensure the well-being of the people? • What are the social rules around each part of this process? • Who spins, who weaves, who sews? Who is tending the fields? Who does the harvesting?”
“Agriculture
• What are the realities vs the perceptions of living in different places? • How does that create friction? • How do people interact with different technologies, ideas, or products based on this fricion? • What signifiers do people have in their clothing about where they consider “home”?”
“Rivers Roads and Railroads
• How do the people involved in textile production get where they need to go? • What paths become roads with rest stops, homes, and businesses connected to the textile process? • Where do you put the smelly parts of textile production? • How easy is it to get raw materials to a mill, milled fiber to a spinnery, thread to a weavery, fabric to someone who can cut it and sew it? • Does the river flood gently and predictably or violently and unpredictably? • What does that mean for the industry and culture along the way? • How is that reflected in what the people wear? • Who travels? What do they wear? • How do they signal, from a safe distance, that they are both worth allowing to pass and not a threat worth confronting or a target worth accosting? • Why do they travel? Where do they stop along the way? • How do they view travelers to their home area? • Where are the struggles over land use? Who controls the access to travel? Who can afford to travel? How often?”
“Screensavers
• How do people get safe water? What do they eat, who grows it, who cooks it? • What do they wear to protect themselves from what elements? Who makes it, who cleans it? • What vital, invisible skills do the questions above imply? • How is pregnancy and labor and delivery viewed? How are newborns cared for? • What relationships are cultivated? • What do we make to carry things and are there cultural rules around who carries what? • How do we track where things are? • Who cares for the sick and dying? What do we do with dead bodies? • How do we mark all these occasions, the being born and loving and moving things and dying? • If some voices seem to be missing from the story, from the world, where are they?”