what resources do we have that wouldn’t be elsewhere, in likely greater abundance/concentration?
complex biochemistry & biodiversity
life forms intelligent enough to serve as slaves
technology*
*Yes, even if the aliens are far more advanced than us, they may still be interested in reviewing our technology. Because technological advancement is not a strictly linear process. Even if they’re far more advanced, we may have a few things that we’ve invented/refined that they haven’t. If I were to place bets, I’d wager on internal combustion engines and firearms as technologies that we may have refined to a greater degree than aliens. Neither of these would be entirely novel technologies, of course. Combusting fuel inside a cylinder to drive a reciprocating piston? Combusting mild explosives inside a barrel to impart kinetic energy into a slug to cause damage at long range? They surely would have invented such things already. But if the chemistry of their home planet is a bit different, or if they invented technologies that replaced these earlier, then they likely wouldn’t have put nearly as much time and effort into refining them over time. Our engines and guns are still probably ‘primitive’ to them on the whole, but they could still learn some things by studying how much we’ve refined and perfected these primitive technologies, as ours may be more powerful and more efficient than any of the ones they ever developed.
There’s a plethora of possibilities here, and as you say, they could be very “resource steered”. On a planet with absolutely massive reserves of easily available iron or aluminium, but basically no calcium oxide, reinforced concrete may never have been invented. Sure, based on the composition of the known universe, that’s highly unlikely, but it’s far from impossible.
I think we tend to forget how our society and technology is shaped by the materials available to us. A planet with a significantly different composition could quickly end up with drastically different technology. Regarding combustion engines: If their atmosphere has significantly less oxygen than ours, they would be so inefficient that they were abandoned early, while if their atmosphere has very high oxygen content the fuels could be regarded as too unsafe to work with, also leading to early abandonment.
If their crust, air, or water has significant acid content, they may never have gotten far with metal working (because everything just corrodes) and developed highly advanced polymers, ceramics, and glasses instead.
point is unlikely imo. Biology is messy and unreliable and beings smart enough to serve as useful slaves, are hard to deal with, especially hyper-social ones like us. And artifical sentience can easily be limited, while biological one needs eugenic efforts and still requires strict controls because of how evolution works. Robots are just easier, once you have figured them out. We are still in the infancy there.
But we have put a bonkers amount of research and development into those two technologies … technologies that are very ‘skippable’ for an alien race that may have developed better alternatives sooner.
Say … if Earth had much smaller reserves of fossil fuels, leading to the reserves running basically dry in the 1960s, then we might have moved on to electric vehicles much sooner. Which means we wouldn’t have put all the research we currently have into crazy refinements like electronically controlled ignition and valve timing, variable geometry turbochargers, oil additives, emissions control systems, etc.
If someone had invented a practical railgun in the mid-1800s, we may never have put so much scientific effort into firearms and may never have developed things like spitzer boattail projectiles, progressive twist rifling, non-corrosive primers, or even smokeless powder.
And maybe it’s just my own biases talking because those are fields I know fairly well, but I do think those are prime candidates for technologies we may have developed and refined more than advanced aliens ever did. And, no, that doesn’t reflect particularly well on us. But other technologies – like, say, polymer plastics or electronics – are things I think aliens would have developed no matter what, and probably would have developed more advanced versions than ours.
There still are other possibilities, though. Perhaps the aliens have a very cooperative and trusting society, so they never developed advanced cryptography and computer security. Perhaps they have better natural healing and self-regeneration capabilities, so they never developed medical technology and prosthetics to our degree. Perhaps they have a cultural/religious aversion to meddling with nature, so they never developed selective breeding, domestication, and gene editing. Perhaps their home planet has extremely stable and predictable weather patterns, so they never bothered with developing meteorology very much. Perhaps their planet has little or no atmospheric oxygen, making fire something they pretty much only see in laboratory settings, so our intensive development of fire detection and suppression technologies are novel.
complex biochemistry & biodiversity
life forms intelligent enough to serve as slaves
technology*
*Yes, even if the aliens are far more advanced than us, they may still be interested in reviewing our technology. Because technological advancement is not a strictly linear process. Even if they’re far more advanced, we may have a few things that we’ve invented/refined that they haven’t. If I were to place bets, I’d wager on internal combustion engines and firearms as technologies that we may have refined to a greater degree than aliens. Neither of these would be entirely novel technologies, of course. Combusting fuel inside a cylinder to drive a reciprocating piston? Combusting mild explosives inside a barrel to impart kinetic energy into a slug to cause damage at long range? They surely would have invented such things already. But if the chemistry of their home planet is a bit different, or if they invented technologies that replaced these earlier, then they likely wouldn’t have put nearly as much time and effort into refining them over time. Our engines and guns are still probably ‘primitive’ to them on the whole, but they could still learn some things by studying how much we’ve refined and perfected these primitive technologies, as ours may be more powerful and more efficient than any of the ones they ever developed.
There’s a plethora of possibilities here, and as you say, they could be very “resource steered”. On a planet with absolutely massive reserves of easily available iron or aluminium, but basically no calcium oxide, reinforced concrete may never have been invented. Sure, based on the composition of the known universe, that’s highly unlikely, but it’s far from impossible.
I think we tend to forget how our society and technology is shaped by the materials available to us. A planet with a significantly different composition could quickly end up with drastically different technology. Regarding combustion engines: If their atmosphere has significantly less oxygen than ours, they would be so inefficient that they were abandoned early, while if their atmosphere has very high oxygen content the fuels could be regarded as too unsafe to work with, also leading to early abandonment.
If their crust, air, or water has significant acid content, they may never have gotten far with metal working (because everything just corrodes) and developed highly advanced polymers, ceramics, and glasses instead.
The list goes on and on…
Spot the USian. lol.
It’s true, though. And not exactly flattering.
But we have put a bonkers amount of research and development into those two technologies … technologies that are very ‘skippable’ for an alien race that may have developed better alternatives sooner.
Say … if Earth had much smaller reserves of fossil fuels, leading to the reserves running basically dry in the 1960s, then we might have moved on to electric vehicles much sooner. Which means we wouldn’t have put all the research we currently have into crazy refinements like electronically controlled ignition and valve timing, variable geometry turbochargers, oil additives, emissions control systems, etc.
If someone had invented a practical railgun in the mid-1800s, we may never have put so much scientific effort into firearms and may never have developed things like spitzer boattail projectiles, progressive twist rifling, non-corrosive primers, or even smokeless powder.
And maybe it’s just my own biases talking because those are fields I know fairly well, but I do think those are prime candidates for technologies we may have developed and refined more than advanced aliens ever did. And, no, that doesn’t reflect particularly well on us. But other technologies – like, say, polymer plastics or electronics – are things I think aliens would have developed no matter what, and probably would have developed more advanced versions than ours.
There still are other possibilities, though. Perhaps the aliens have a very cooperative and trusting society, so they never developed advanced cryptography and computer security. Perhaps they have better natural healing and self-regeneration capabilities, so they never developed medical technology and prosthetics to our degree. Perhaps they have a cultural/religious aversion to meddling with nature, so they never developed selective breeding, domestication, and gene editing. Perhaps their home planet has extremely stable and predictable weather patterns, so they never bothered with developing meteorology very much. Perhaps their planet has little or no atmospheric oxygen, making fire something they pretty much only see in laboratory settings, so our intensive development of fire detection and suppression technologies are novel.