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http://kottke.org/09/12/avatar

This blogger has a point, with mobility, resources, and something resembling an organic planetary INTERNET accessible at all times for hundreds of years why aren't they more technologically advanced?

An explanation could be they were highly advanced, but some doomsday weapon wiped everything out and turned back the clock in terms of technology.

Yes this is a movie but it's also a sci-fi story, which means some plausible science is needed for the story to work.

In the movie, humans excel in science, but science is just a low level tool subservient to the whims of mega-corporations. Mercenaries for hire become private armies for the purpose of looting and destruction. This is as near as it gets to what is really happening right now in 2010.

The origin of science is curiosity, and all science starts from examining stuff with the mind of a child, all the way to re-examining advanced concepts as if they were still 'tadika' level in the hopes of breaking ever newer frontiers. Now you could say the Na'vi emphasizes warrior training over intellectual study, but even so surely a millennial old database could give any curious Na'vi some idea for innovation, but if we use the rule "necessity is the mother of invention" then we need to examine which areas of Na'vi life are under some sort of pressure to improve.

Example: Compare & Contrast

Transportation -
Communication -
Entertainment -
Warfare & Defense -
Housing -
Agriculture -
Education -
Healthcare -
Economy -
etc..

What's the incentive to make things better, faster, and in bigger numbers? Is there a major threat (there is now, seeing as the humans will probably come back with a vengeance and deploy nukes/bioweapon to obtain the Unobtanium)

Back to our world, Avatar presents a mirror image critique of the present state of the human condition:

1. You could say we've came a long way from the stone age, but then again, by not improving upon the systems used so successfully in the previous centuries to deal with TODAY'S COMPLEX ISSUES, we are actually coming face to face with diseconomies of scale, the costs > the benefits.

2. "Dead World" means what? Cold winter from nuclear war? Food supply system devastated from the effects global warming? Supervirus epidemic? Social chaos from unsustainable overpopulation?

3. Most important, what is humanity's VALUE SYSTEM? From the movie it looks like the priorities are.. #1. Money, #2. Things (resources/fuel/beer), #3. People, #4. Flora & fauna -- as an afterthought.

I've watched the movie again (free tix!) and noticed a couple of things,

1. Eywa is obviously sentient as she could understand what Jake told her about what humans did to earth and verify the fact by going through Grace's memories.

2. Grace is the top biologist in her field, and everything she knows about DNA and stuff like neural networks is now part of Eywa.

3. Since they can download/upload data at will, it will just be a matter of time before all this new information is spread throughout the populace, or any scientifically inclined native.

Looking at real world ventures into science like,

Nanotech, nanobots
Swarm intelligence
DNA computing, quantum computing
Biowarfare

It's not hard to imagine that if the Na'Vi do progress scientifically, the organic element will be quite a prominent element in their tech, which is nothing to sneeze at.

Remember War of the Worlds? The common cold virus turned out to be humanity's savior vs the technologically superior Martians.