It seems like every other day, someone asks "what if XYZ nation or culture industrialized?" Industrialization in itself is a rather blanket and unspecific term, meaning in a vague sense the many technological innovations of the 18th century that allowed for a dramatic increase in the population of the cities and the decline of agrarian societies in favor of powerful nation-states that engage in manufacturing. However, the specific innovations required for this are many, and since real life isn't a video game, there's no "tech tree" that would guide a prospective industrializer in which technologies to acquire. Furthermore, steam engines and other proto or pseudo industrial technologies have existed since ancient Greece, but were seen as random toys or curiosities rather than something that could actually be used to make things. Even the first steam powered device was just seen as a curiosity to shove into a temple of a god who in 400 years wouldn't even be worshiped anymore.
This begs the question, for a society to advance to a standard of living like we see today, is it necessary that it undergo industrialization? Personally, I genuinely do not know. On one hand, you could have a society similar to the Indus Valley Civilization, that had running water and sewage and even the assembly line, but even then, while not technically the industrial revolution as we know of it OTL, they did have a kind of Mechanical revolution that lead to the increased urbanization found there. On the other hand, industrialization made things like the mass production of food, vaccines, and penicillin happen, which meant that the human population could just take off. ON the other hand of that, today our environment is suffering, and it is arguable that for a long time things got significantly worse for the average person during Industrialization until the mid 1900's.
What say ye? Is industrialization required for a society to progress? If not, is there a viable alternative?
This begs the question, for a society to advance to a standard of living like we see today, is it necessary that it undergo industrialization? Personally, I genuinely do not know. On one hand, you could have a society similar to the Indus Valley Civilization, that had running water and sewage and even the assembly line, but even then, while not technically the industrial revolution as we know of it OTL, they did have a kind of Mechanical revolution that lead to the increased urbanization found there. On the other hand, industrialization made things like the mass production of food, vaccines, and penicillin happen, which meant that the human population could just take off. ON the other hand of that, today our environment is suffering, and it is arguable that for a long time things got significantly worse for the average person during Industrialization until the mid 1900's.
What say ye? Is industrialization required for a society to progress? If not, is there a viable alternative?