Board Thread:Lore Discussion/@comment-15888551-20130819093722/@comment-176.27.137.90-20161216090510

Why is everyone talking about technological advancement as if that has to involve an industrial revolution and the introduction of guns and computers? And is it really that unrealistic for this not to happen over night - does this make the elder scrolls universe "technologically stagnant"?

Throughout history, before the industrial revolution, technological advancement wasn't as drastic as this. Most lay people probably wouldn't notice the difference in technology between time periods of Oblivion and Skyrim unless they look a great deal into this, as well as researching how technology has changed during the middle ages and antiquity. It's only really the introduction of more contemporary technology that most people would recognise as technological advancement. There may have been a great deal of advancement in areas like metallurgy, agriculture, and construction methods that aren't immediately obvious to most players (or in fact may not even be seen; we never see buildings being built, for example, so they could easily have moved from using ramps to pulleys without there being any evidence in the games).

In fact, there is one possible area of advancement between the fourth and fifth Elder Scrolls game I can think of, with actual evidence in the game. In Skyrim there are sawmills you can use to cut wood, and I've also seen vertical windmills grind grain. I haven't seen anything like that in the previous Elder Scrolls games (although I could be wrong. For example, they may have been mentioned in a book I'm not aware of, or I could just not remember, or maybe they exist but there's just no evidence of them in the actual games). So there's a possible area of advancement; the use of wind and water power.

So, TL;DR - Technological advancement doesn't necessarily mean suddenly going through an industrial revolution and developing steampunk technology. There are other ways to advance.