Chip design & manufacturing is probably the closest thing we have to witchcraft as a species.
Disturbingly, using the magical tool twice on the same incantation never produces exactly the same result.
Microprocessors are always the choke point, where I’d be hard pressed to reproduce one, and they form the basis for so much else.
Even going to 1925 and teaching how to make a MOSFET would help.
Not particularly micro, but a processor nonetheless.
If the drinking water is far away at the top of a mountain it isn't so convenient to throw your garbage in it, take a dump in it or float the dead in it.
(a TTL 4004 would be an energy drain and would be hot, but it would work). I think CRAY used ECL
What about a bunch of other things like smelting iron or teaching everyone to read? They don't seem like choke points because we are long past them.
Producing cheap iron is hard.
Producing even the simplest IC? Definitely not. And that is ignoring the need for electricity and everything else required to actually use it.
Because if you need to explain GPS at the level of the impact of general relativity, my understanding is that by itself is already a topic normally introduced in the final year of a physics degree.
If you're OK with simplifying to "time passes at a different rate for the satellites, here's the equation, I will not explain why it works just roll with it", why insist on ceasing to use it if the foundation isn't understandable?
“There’s a lot more going on than just saying a sentence and then things happen!”
What you've suggested doesn't work at high resolution at sea or in the wilderness due to lack of radio towers at suitable frequencies, atmospheric variations and ducting influencing the signal of the existing systems.
Doesn't work in valleys or cities due to multipath reflections.
Only works in low rise areas or while flying at high altitude.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_propagation
That's why the satellites got built in the first place, and why China and the EU added their own satellites to the US and Russian global navigation satellite system.
I found a similar treasure some years ago: How we take convenience for self-evident. We love to pretend everything should be as easy as possible. You should really never have to think about anything, never have to learn anything, never do anything, nothing involving muscles, endurance or fine motor skills. Life is best without developing and without accomplishing.
"The Last Man Who Knew Everything"[0] was 1773–1829 and the trend towards compulsory education was only beginning, 2 countries at the start of his life and 7 at the end[1].
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Man_Who_Knew_Everythi...
There is nothing surprising in that, we know where we have been historically.
When people don't understand vaccination, or electricity, or the shape of the Earth, the more interesting question is where we are going.
Or now with latest LLM and voice recognition you can just utter the words to summon food.
It might look like witchcraft though to the uninitiated.
Currently it is more esoteric on how a baby (human but not only) is formed than how we build a microprocessor. So if anything I would say we are statistical acrobats, existing despite the numerous approximations in biology. Compared to us humans, microprocessors are predictable and boring.
This is how science destroys wonder instead of inspiring it.
What is mystical is the fact that you exist in the first place, plus everything else. It’s all far out and enchanting.
I strongly disagree around how forming a baby is amore esoteric.. cell mitosis is a pretty well understood science at this point and eventually we will reach a hard limit of covering all the surface area of that domain of knowledge. However technological discoveries unfold more like a fractal.. it isn't really a bounded domain as far as we know.
Except with chips it is shrink instead of rise. Like if a chip works well and is reliable, time to shrink it (or run it faster, or run it hotter, etc) :)
"An etch exists because of its own desires and the use of powerful and arcane magic. The etch passes from a state of humanity to a non-human, non-living, and non-conductive existence through force of light. It retains this status by certain conjurations, enchantments, and a reticlefactory. An etch is most often encountered within its hidden chambers, this lair typically being in some dry, deserted area or vast underground lab, and in any case both solidly constructed of stone and very sterile.
Through the power which changes this creature from human to etch, the armor class becomes the equivalent of +1 plate armor and +1 shield {armor class 0). Similarly, cast dice are 8-sided, and the etch can be affecied only by magical attack forms or by monsters with magical properties or 6 or more hit dice.
Etches were formerly ultra powerful magic-users of magie-user/clerics of not less than 18th level of magic-use. Their touch is so cold as to cause 1-10 points of damage and paralyze opponents who fail to make their saving throw. The mere sight of an etch will cause any creature below 5 nm {or 5 hit dice) to flee in fear of overexposure. All etches are able to use magic appropriately at the level they had attained prior to becoming non-human.
An etch can only be permanently destroyed when their reticlefactory is destroyed. Unless the etch's reticlefactory is located and destroyed, the dice will be cast, and the etch will re-adhere in 1d10 days after their apparent defect.
The fallowing spells or attack farms have no effect an etches: charm, sleep, enfeeblement, annealing, insanity or death spells/symbols.
Description: An etch appears very much as does a wight or mummy, being of skeletal form, eyesockets mere black holes with radiating points of amplificated light, and garments most often rotting (but most rich)."