sfenders t1_j29l9fm wrote on December 30, 2022 at 5:17 PM

From what I remember, it being a long time since I read it, "being so reclusive held humanity back" seems like an over-simplification. Perhaps it did, at some point, but only after humanity was eventually ready to benefit from its secret knowledge which did take some time.

The rest seem entirely in keeping with the character of the book and in large part exemplary of black comedy. Your sense of humour may vary.

Redjay12 OP t1_j29msmz wrote on December 30, 2022 at 5:26 PM

I may not agree with the idea that they held humanity back but in the second part of the book that is a central conflict. A world leader and a religious leader have a little argument about it and the religious leader insists that people lost their lives to maintain these records and they couldn’t be used until now. The military leader disagrees and blames them for the state of the world

sfenders t1_j29tdzj wrote on December 30, 2022 at 6:07 PM

Yeah, I had only a vague memory of how that disagreement went. I suppose I must've been left with the impression that when you take the long view of history, the military dude was largely (or at least partly) in the wrong there.