Paper in the MU...

[silo]

I heard somewhere that the scroll that had the tasks to complete before Mata-Nui was awakened on it was the only scroll in the entire Matoran Universe - all other texts in the MU were engraved on tablets (the scrolls in MNOLG were non-canon apparently).

 

So I was wondering...why on earth would they do that? Why would they use tablets that are hard to transport and impractical?

 

Its not like they don't have the technology - I mean matoran have invented robots and launchers and forges but they can't invent paper?

 

Anyway, tell me what you think...

 

                                                    -Silo

[Cambion]

as far as i'm concerned, both MNOGs are canon.

 

however.

 

Bionicle has always followed the Schizo Tech trope, where either certain ancient technologies (i.e. wheels, paper) that would logically exist in a given fictional world don't exist, or startlingly advanced ones do exist. this is sometimes lampshaded in canon, but surprisingly often it's given no explanation whatsoever. Bionicle unfortunately falls into the latter category. the lack of paper and wheels in the Matoran Universe is simply there for the cool factor...if you can even call it that.

 

(lots and lots of things in the Bionicle storyline exist solely for Rule of Cool anyway though so honestly it's not much of a surprise)

[toa kopaka4372]

There are a lot of possible explanations, but I personally think it was a decision the story team made to further differentiate BIONICLE from our world. I thought it was a neat touch, in any case. Besides, seeing how popular carving is in the Matoran Universe, I don't see why its inhabitants would pursue something different. Also, we never saw the existence of ink in the MU, so it makes sense paper didn't exist either.

Edited August 9, 2014 by toa kopaka4372

[Volatile]

I think they did that because in the first year they were going for the more primal-ish tribal theme and they just kept going with it

[Banana Gunz]

@Arc: Well I don't know whether or not the wheel would have to be considered canon. It's been used on transports and trade caravans in the matoran universe several times before.

 

 

But back on the main subject, I do find it kind of odd that paper shouldn't exist in the canon. If both had to exist I would imagine tablets are made for more important things in which they want the message to be kept undamaged and paper is just for little less-important writings and such.

 

It's not really a bother to me at all though. After all, if Onu-Matoran can own and operate iPads who need paper or tablets at all?   

[Toatapio Nuva]

Interestingly, although the Matoran don't know of paper, they are known to use mechanical tablets similar to ipads, at least in the Metru Nui environment. So they have surpassed the slowness of carving, in a way.

[Akavakaku]

When you think about it, neither wheels nor paper are terribly convenient. Wheels only are superior to legs on flat, smooth surfaces, and even then their only advantage is their simplicity. Mechanical legs are far more versatile if you have the technology to make them, and clearly the Matoran do.

And while paper is useful, making it requires harvesting wood, which certainly wasn't available in Metru Nui, and probably not to great extents in other areas of the universe. But mining stone and protodermis is universally practical, regardless of the environment. It's also much longer-lasting, a necessity thanks to their lifespans.

[Pomegranate]

While stone tablets are obviously bulkier and heavier than paper that probably wasn't a big issue for the mostly mechanical inhabitants of the MU. Since it's in magical Protodermis Land, the stone they used was probably lighter than you think and certainly less of a burden for them than they'd be for us. Additionally, they are easier to take care of and would last for hundreds of thousands of years, easily, at least much more likely to survive than paper, with all these inhabitants with elemental powers running around that could easily ruin enormous amounts of written records with a stray attack or just any seemingly innocent action that accidentally got paper involved. I don't actually recall very many trees in the MU, with the parse shrubbery and plants on Voya Nui being the only reference I remember, so at least in Metru Nui trees and other plants involved in making parchment would not nearly be plentiful enough for mass production of paper. 

The Schizo Tech thing is also why the world builders working on Bionicle decided to go with that.

[Mailli]

Most matoran started by living on Metru Nui. There are no trees on Metru Nui. No trees = No paper.

The reason it wasn't invented later on Mata Nui, Stelt, or Voya Nui is because there wasn't a need for it.

There are still flaws with this idea, but it is the best I can think of.

[Methaxx]

I may be mistaken but didn't Vakama have paper scrolls in his forge in LOMN?

[Akavakaku]

Well, Ga-Koro DID invent an algae-based paper substitute for making temporary notes.

[bonesiii]

I heard somewhere that the scroll that had the tasks to complete before Mata-Nui was awakened on it was the only scroll in the entire Matoran Universe - all other texts in the MU were engraved on tablets (the scrolls in MNOLG were non-canon apparently).

Off the top of my head, I'm not sure if that was actually confirmed. Are you sure you're not thinking of the statement that it was one of the few things not made out of protodermis? Regardless, they certainly do not use scrolls the vast majority of the time, nor is the use of them confirmed anywhere as far as I know.

 

(Also... I don't seem to be recalling any scrolls in MNOG? Did you MNOG2 perhaps? I do recall paper in that.)

 

So I was wondering...why on earth would they do that?

Paper crumbles and rots. Tablets don't.

 

(Of course, we must wonder why the Great Beings' scroll didn't crumble, but it's made by Great Beings, so not that surprising. It could have a restorative power included in it, or just be made of a very resilient substance rather than real paper.

 

Why would they use tablets that are hard to transport and impractical?

Hard to transport, yes. Impractical? Depends on what your concerns are. Given the uberlong lifespans, I doubt they wanted to have the annoyance of needing to remember to periodically recopy old paper before it rots to new paper. Plus they had computers in most places to store less important information. And paper burns. Wet paper equals bad. Paper is needy. Tablets aren't.

 

Besides...

 

Paperwork. Anybody a fan of it?

 

Thought not.

 

Except Gibbs on NCIS.

 

Its not like they don't have the technology - I mean matoran have invented robots and launchers and forges but they can't invent paper?

Three possible problems with that reasoning:

 

1) Their being partially robotic in nature, and having the knowledge to make actual robots for themselves, isn't a matter of their own invention. They don't use paper (primarily) simply because their creators didn't program them to do so. (Likely because tablets are longer lasting, and would only be needed as occasional backups or alternatives of computer records anyways.) And since the system they had worked, there would be no reason to expect them to invent something else. While they did make some inventions, that was over the span of 100,000 years -- by and large, Matoran aren't inventive, and their scientific interest was limited. They mostly were just maintenance workers.

 

2) Given that tablets plus computers are, in ways more relevant to them, superior, whether or not paper was known does not mean it would be used. But in fact, the main uses of paper seen in Bionicle were on Mata Nui (also just leaves), where the computer option wasn't available. To there, it seems they used both tablets and a paper-equivalent (or just the leaves, depending on what's canon). Look at today -- everything's going over to internet options and paper is being reduced. Yet metal engravings still happen for various purposes, inscribed tombstones are still used, etc. Basically, paper belongs to an intermediate technological level, not necessarily more paper the more advanced you get! (Just like wheels as I've said recently.) But computers and tablets "are forever" (actually tablets may last much longer than even computers!)

 

3) Technological advancement in general is not a progression through a linear spectrum; this is a common mistake made when viewing science fiction stories. Rather, the idea for paper came from a human who thought of it, for whatever reasons. It does not follow that all alien cultures would have the same idea. Or, even if somebody did, making quality paper is not easy, after all. Somebody had to keep the goal in mind and try a lot of ways of reaching it until some worked well enough. In an alien society it's possible somebody would think of the basic idea but after encountering difficulties, assume they aren't worth trying to solve, and stop the process.

 

Compare it to the Wright Brothers' discovery of the importance of wing shape to lift. Ancients were motivated to fly, but nobody thought to study it carefully enough to think of that -- it isn't an easy thing to notice about bird wings, after all. So ancient attempts to fly never got very far because early machines failed. Imagine if somebody had thought of that long ago, but nobody happened to think of paper!

 

Bionicle has always followed the Schizo Tech trope, where either certain ancient technologies (i.e. wheels, paper) that would logically exist in a given fictional world don't exist, or startlingly advanced ones do exist. this is sometimes lampshaded in canon, but surprisingly often it's given no explanation whatsoever. Bionicle unfortunately falls into the latter category. the lack of paper and wheels in the Matoran Universe is simply there for the cool factor...

It does not follow that because something isn't explained to you, that it is illogical. See above points. Also, since you bring up wheels, as I've said about that before, wheels are an accomodation to primitive technology to get around -- although they do have some advantages -- but robotic walking legs are harder to invent, and have many advantages of terrain that wheels don't have. The Matoran had those, so they likely saw no need to try to come up with a more primitive method. Even today we are only just now beginning to achieve properly walking robotic legs, and getting them to see and correctly understand the terrain is still on the horizon for the most part (though we've made good advances there too).

 

Also, cool and logic are not mutually exclusive. While the authors might not consciously think of the logical reason behind it, the subconscious probably has to (that's how it works), and that feeds into their choice of what "feels cool." But by contrast, if they had robotic invention ability, but somebody needed to invent a robot, say, with six legs instead of four or two, and they couldn't because "nobody knows how to make robots", that wouldn't feel cool because it is a contradiction.

 

And just general advice -- try not to understand stories primarily through tropes. It's cool to identify tropes on the side, but if you make that your primary emphasis you can miss good reasons for why something is done, and possibly that can lead to displeasure that could be avoided.

 

Also, we never saw the existence of ink in the MU, so it makes sense paper didn't exist either.

Matoran masks were painted, both their main color, and the silver, more temporary paint at the top of Metru masks. So the principle was there. And I would think at the very least, Nixie's ink on leaves is probably canon. (The paper in MNOG2 might not be, but could easily just be swapped out for leaves in our imaginations, perhaps treated with a wax lamination or something.)

 

@Arc: Well I don't know whether or not the wheel would have to be considered canon. It's been used on transports and trade caravans in the matoran universe several times before.

It's canon. They were used on the Southern Continent, and possible a few other places. But in Metru Nui, which was one of the most advanced locations, they didn't use wheels, in favor of hovering and walking tech, which makes sense. Wheels probably indicated a poorer region.

 

and paper is just for little less-important writings and such

I agree -- but leaves would probably suffice for the most part. There may have been some paper though, maybe a simple recipe for treatment of leaf material to make paper. Basically I see leaves as used for memos normally, and same could apply to paper if it does exist there, so their long-term resilience would be irrelevant, but anything you want to last, you use tablets, just like real life. But the need for memos seems rare.

 

And while paper is useful, making it requires harvesting wood, which certainly wasn't available in Metru Nui

Some issues:

 

1) Wood was available in Metru Nui. Less than Mata Nui, though.

 

2) Paper doesn't necessarily require wood; more quickly rotting types could use leaf material. Papyrus, of course, used a grasslike plant. Depends on how narrowly or widely you define "paper" really.

 

3) Either way, if they had valued making paper, they could have planted large fields of whatever plant would be used for it.

 

4) Trees are probably a lot more common in some regions like areas of the Southern Continent. (Then again, it's possible paper was used in those areas and we just didn't see it! We really got to see almost nothing of the Matoran Universe percentagewise.)

 

There are no trees on Metru Nui. No trees = No paper.

Where is this misconception coming from?

 

Maybe that Le-Metru wasn't a jungle like Le-Wahi? But that doesn't equate to no trees (that's a fallacy of the unfounded universal negative, a form of Hasty Generalization). Here's some images of trees in Metru Nui:

 

http://biosector01.com/wiki/images/4/47/LoMN_Ga-Metru.PNG

http://biosector01.com/wiki/images/c/c1/Comic_Morbuzakh_Attacking_Vahki.png

http://biosector01.com/wiki/images/4/4f/WoS_Ga-Metru_Forest.png

 

And one that's ambiguous, possibly showing park-like sections of the ground with trees:

 

http://biosector01.com/wiki/images/b/b3/LoMN_Le-Metru.PNG

 

There were probably trees here and there in some of the other regions, such as perhaps around the Coliseum. Although I'm not sure if any canon images or confirmation of that exist, there is this concept art, which BS01 labels as if it was canon on the Coliseum page:

 

http://biosector01.com/wiki/images/1/12/Coliseumarea.PNG

 

There would be no particular reason for trees not to be canon around there.

 

I may be mistaken but didn't Vakama have paper scrolls in his forge in LOMN?

Ah yes! I don't have a full image handy, but there's this:

 

http://biosector01.com/wiki/images/f/fb/LoMN_Toa_Stone.PNG

 

The Toa stones there were also wrapped in something like paper, probably meant to be more like leather. Plus of course they had something like cloth/leather, as seen in Turaga robes:

 

http://biosector01.com/wiki/images/d/db/Dume.png

 

So if they really wanted to have a paper equivalent, they could. But by and large it wouldn't be as useful as tablets.

 

Well, Ga-Koro DID invent an algae-based paper substitute for making temporary notes.

Hmm. I take it you read this as the confirmed explanation, somewhere, of the paper in MNOG2? I couldn;t find any matches from a search on BS01.

[fishers64]

Er, I thought paper was invented in the first place because you can write on it faster than cutting a tablet. I think the main reason they didn't invent was that they didn't need to write as fast, seeing as they lived for thousands of years and all that. Also, tablets can last thousands of years as opposed to paper - what bones said. Living that long would make durability more important than writing speed.  

[Akavakaku]

No, I meant the big leaflike things from MNOG1. Anyway, I recall the novel said the Toa Stones were wrapped in foil.