Thread: technology... ( possibly spoiller if you haven't seen the anime )

What i want to point out is more obvious in the anime... but isn't the existence of automails a little bit out of place?
Well i don't say that they are not cool or that their existence doesn't help the anime to progress nicely... but just how can they have such advanced technology when they don't even have planes ... it is not only the mechanical part but the biological too . Even in real world we don't have enough knowledge to make something like this to actually work , let alone it being common knowledge that can be applied but winry..
Also in the anime adaptation the difference between the 2 worlds is the development of alchemy and technology .. and yet the technology of an automail is just lightyears ahead of zeppelins and V2 rockets.....
So.. what do you think? ( having said all the above, i feel i need to make clear that i am not annoyed but it .. i like the way they limit or enhance ed's capabilities )

I can kind of agree with you but I think it was out of different fields of knowledge. "Our" world was one made entirely of industry and physics. That means we did things the alchemic worlds might think impossible. Planes, zepplins, rockets, these were things we developed out of necessity because things like alchemy DIDN'T exist. Thus instead of focusing on machines for convience (cause that's what they all are) the alchemists focused on machines of mobility. You must remeber though our worlds are parrallel and most of the people and technology are similiar there are a branch of differences.
A second point is that some might think the alchemic world is superior to our own, isn't it? There progress is made infinitely faster considering that they need little more then a circle (not even for those that see the gate) to create food, novelties, machines, buildings, in the movie we even saw Al use his alchemic gloves to creat a large more advanced transmutation circle! Think if we had that sort of ability we would probably have been at stages of stem cell research decades ago.
Finally, you've got to take skeptibility into the entire thing, no thing such as Homunculi exist in our world, why are you not questioning this parrallel?
If anything I think you should be asking why they aren't even FARTHER ahead of us in technology.
Hope I helped assuage some fustration

P.S. One last thing, the auto mail isn't "common knowledge" to Winry, the anime specifies that she is a prodigul child in automail like Ed and Al are geniuses of alchemy. Ed says in one episode while explaining automail (as well as in the movie) that "he really doesn't get it"

grav_shell, actually there are now prosthetic arms which respond to input from nerves, sure its not perfect yet since fast movement and fine movements (at the same time) are not really implemented but we are getting there.

Back to the topic, yeah I always wondered what he deal was with automails, at first I thought that perhaps they were made with alchemy but that was debunked, perhaps it has to do with a better knowledge of the human body and the fact that in that world it appears that the emphasis is more on human development rather thatn technological.

I also thought of alchemy being the principal behind automails although winry and other automail mechanics are not alchemists.. i would like it this way...

Well, as for the Homunculi thing. I don't think this is a problem as in the anime they are a byproduct of alchemy so they don't need to have a parallel in the real world, imo. And in the manga they are direct result of alchemy usage, or so it seems , as we don't really know the nature of fathers powers ( other than they are great )

On second thought they actually are more advanced than we are. I hadn't think of it before Tagger brought it up, but in the movie it is shown to us that a scientist from their world came to ours with a nuclear bomb at hand... and Roy helps the brothers attack the blond lady , using a balloon... so actually they are more advanced .. but then all these, make the theory about technology being the main difference between, the world rather wrong.

Judging from the way hohenhime speaks it seems like the 2 worlds are supposed to be of equal power (just with different approaches).

the automail is cool. can we just leave it at that. i know there's somehtign not quite right about it but we should just let it be. i mean like in pokemon they have they technology to put things into balls but they find out about another continent on their planet later on. just leave it alone, automail is gnarly, please don't kill it.

I never said i don't like automails... they ROCK.
I would just like it more if there was a sufficient explanation.

If anything I think you should be asking why they aren't even FARTHER ahead of us in technology.

they are not farther ahead of us in technology compare to us today, but how do you know won't be more advance than us if they take the same years as us to develope. we just don't know how many years in their existence compare to ours. 100 years ago our technology is not that advance.

all their technology is at the same level but the automails r way ahead of our time... maybe it has its roots in some old form of alchemy although i doubt it. (someone is gonna argue against that i know). but im pretty sure we can all agree that auto mail rocks

Well, the Manga takes place a year ahead of the Anime. But what I've noticed is tha the cars in the Anime look like 20s cars, and in the Manga they look like the cars we had at that time. Also, in the times that the last episodes of the Anime take place, steam cars were more dominant, yet they use gas-powered cars in the anime and manga. This suggests that the world of the anime is a few years ahead of our own. And automail might've have been able to develop like that because of their superior understanding of the human body. Alchemy focuses more on human power while our technology relies on natural rescources. Also all of the experiments on humans during the Ishbalan genocide might've helped develop automail.