(2021-06-30) Ise Jingu And The Pyramid Of Enabling Technologies

Brian Potter: Ise Jingu and the Pyramid of Enabling Technologies. The Ise Jingu Grand Shrine sits in the forests of Ise-Shima National Park, in Japan’s Mie Prefecture

Jingu is famous for its tradition of periodic reconstruction, known as Shikinen sengu, or simply sengu. Every 20 years exact copies of Naiku, Geku, and 14 other shrines are built on empty sites next to the existing structures, after which the old structures are torn down

for over 1300 years, since the first sengu took place around 690 AD.

also includes creating exact copies of thousands of ceremonial treasures and artifacts

All of which are produced using traditional techniques. The rebuilding at Jingu thus means more than simply rebuilding the shrines - it means recreating a sizable fraction of a 7th-century economy.

Jingu’s rebuilding is designed to reproduce the existing structures as exactly as possible.

Physical and Social Technology

the most important technology at Jingu is social - it’s the transfer of skills and techniques from one generation to the next, ensuring the temples and artifacts can continue to be reproduced accurately

Process Knowledge and Written Knowledge

This sort of knowledge is what Dan Wang calls process knowledge - the knowledge of how to do things that can’t easily be written down.

• here Wang says: Technology should be understood in three distinct forms: as processes embedded into tools (like pots, pans, and stoves); explicit instructions (like recipes); and as process knowledge, or what we can also refer to as tacit knowledge, know-how, and technical experience. Process knowledge is the kind of knowledge that’s hard to write down as an instruction.

It’s not uncommon for written knowledge on a subject to be voluminous, while process knowledge on the same subject is nearly nonexistent. This is why we know the names of every Roman emperor but don’t know how they mixed their concrete, or why we have thousands of pages of Apollo program documents but couldn’t build a Saturn V today.

Process Knowledge and Institutions

Because much of it can’t be written down or otherwise recorded, keeping process knowledge alive ultimately requires an institution

The more important it is that process knowledge gets retained, the stronger and more capable your institution needs to be - the more it needs to be able to push against changes in the surrounding cultural environment.

At one point the weaving skills for producing one of the ceremonial artifacts (a sword bandolier) were possessed only by one weaver with no apprentice. As time goes on, Jingu might need to start training its own artisans for the sengu to continue.

Process Knowledge and Building

I wonder if the modern world isn’t increasingly susceptible to losing large chunks of it’s process knowledge.

Division of labor increases as the market gets larger

The most advanced semiconductors, for instance, are now built by just one firm, as are the EUV machines used to build them (I wonder if there are rules about how many ASML engineers are allowed to fly on the same plane together).

• Jan'2021: China's $150 Billion Chip Push Has Hit a Dutch Snag. Europe’s largest tech company supplies the machines that can make next-generation semiconductors. But it’s isn’t selling these to China. ASML, Europe’s largest technology company, is the world’s only supplier of machines that can make the next generation of cutting-edge semiconductors. But the Dutch company isn’t allowed to sell them to China. Its latest set of earnings suggest that, for all of China’s spending to boost domestic chipmaking, the industry’s traditional heartlands — Taiwan, South Korea and the U.S. — are the ones getting further ahead.
• Mar'2021: Meet ASML, the World's Dominant Supplier of Semiconductor Equipment. ASML’s big customers—TSMC, Samsung, and Intel—don’t place purchase orders and then expect two-day shipping. Delivery takes roughly two years. ASML’s state-of-the-art EUV machines have 100,000+ parts, cost ~$120 million, and ship in 40 freight containers.