How Advanced is Equestrian Technology? Is There an Equivalent Time Period?

[hawkflame 3,310]

i'd say it's timeless and impossible to pick a year.  There are elements of middle ages-type fantasy, there are also elements that are relatively modern 20th century, and even other eras- the Hearth Warming Eve story clearly shows elements of Ancient Rome, feudalism, and the Renaissance era all existing at the same time. 

 

Hell, according to one scene in Hearts and Hooves Day, *arcade video games* are canon. 

[Okie Dokie Lokie 24]

Nope, they have video games in Equestria. MLP is a majorly anachronistic stew, they have had 80's styles (Like with Cheerilee), but they also have things in Canterlot that are more suited to the 1800's. There's no real way to pin down the time period for MLP.

 

Exhibit A

 

Exhibit B

whoops I was meant to say is that they don't hace mobile phones only, so yea I guess it could be the 70s-80s with the existence of arcade cabinets. 

[Nohbdy 4,108]

I don't think it's possible to accurately determine MLP's time period relative to our own. Considering that they don't even have basic technologies like telephones or incandescent lightbulbs, despite having access to more advanced ones such as hydroelectric dams (The Mysterious Mare Do Well) and high-tech science fiction machines (Feeling Pinkie Keen), as well as arcade games as the above posters mentioned, we can draw very few conclusions about Equestria's time period. That's before we consider that this is a world in which magic trumps science. 

 

There's not enough consistency to determine MLP's time period. The creators probably just threw in whatever they felt was needed.

[Jadefire 2,797]

Originally (circa Season 1), the show's setting was more Victorian/Colonial era, with candles and lanterns and carriages and the like. Occaisionally higher technology would be pulled out for humor or for when the plot called for it.

 

Starting in Season 2 and 3, however, that was largely thrown out the window, and the ponies now use 20th century technology more often.

 

That being said, they are largely anachronistic, which could probably be justified in-universe by the existence of Unicorn magic making technology develop in a much different way than it did for humans.

[duidamasterXD 9,627]

@@Silverwisp the Bard,

@@MallaJong1,

@@pinkiefan1287,

@@Okie Dokie Lokie,

 

We happened to have several threads dedicated to speculating on how advanced Equestrian technology is, and others discussing what time period, if any, the show is set in. Most judge the time period from the technology we see in the show, and as all of these are essentially related to discussing technology in Equestria, they have been merged together. The oldest topic was renamed to accommodate this.  

[Vinyl Scratch (Filly)™ 936]

Well, I find this subject rather odd. The ponies seem to have DJ sets and Cinemas, but they don't have telephones and stuff like that... I never really thought about it too much to be honest. 

[Flutter's lover <3 8,206]

I've kinda wondered. What time period would the MLP universe be in? Or would they be in more of a "Middle Earth" type of timeline?.

 

Like, everything is horse/pony drawn it seems,  except the train, which seems to be steam powered.

 

so of it is in one of "our" time periods and not "middle Earth" type, I"m thinking it's around 1775/mid 1800s. There's stage coaches, and look at Appleloosa, it was a straight Wild West town.

 

But with some ponies having magic, and there being dragons,it could be a middle earth type era. But there were no trains in middle earth.There were however, castles, and magical beings

 

 

What're your guys thoughts?

Edited July 4, 2013 by Flutter Dash

[Bendy 1,821]

In the show itself and fan fiction they are in the Medieval period with a few industrial revolution like elements such as trains, modern elements like proper soap and medical care. 

 

They seemed to have a cinema in season 3 in Bad Apple, so that was a kinda a break of the narrative in much the same way as in Godzilla appearing out from nowhere to eat cake with Pinkie Pie and stomp on the bad guys to save Equestria.

 

However, if you were ever to write fan fiction you could dismiss it as not existing in your universe of MLP FIM.

 

Remember multiverse. And also magic is very useful to make your lives better, even if you're in the Medieval period.

Edited July 4, 2013 by Rush

[Silver Letter 1,832]

Equestria simply appears to have a fantasy based timeline which means that technology may not be tied to the number of years, explaining the train and other technology. That is only my interpretation which may not be correct.

[Enemy Stand 446]

It's probably its own timeline, or a hodgepodge of others. Although there are many things that suggest it may be 1800s or so, there are microwaves as shown in "A Friend in Deed", and speakers/sound systems.

Edited July 4, 2013 by Orangejack

[Inactive01 5,299]

I don't think the show intended for us to understand what time period it actually existed in. They just worked with their imaginations and fused a lot of the different time periods together. The magic of the Medieval Era of castles (not Middle Earth; that's LOTR geography), the small quaint towns that represented the suburbs of the Industrial Era, and the modern technologies of microwaves and sound speaker systems. Heck, there's even camera, so that's an allusion to the late 1800s-early 1900s.  

[Forlong 1,726]

The Post Classical Era, obviously.

 

Equestria is not nessicarially on Earth, at least not the Earth of our dimension.  With "Equestria Girls", they made a cannon multiverse; so now all fanfics are cannon.  Twilight turning evil and murdering Discord to take over Equestria and ruling it with an iron hoof?  CANNON!  Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy falling in love and doing things I don't want to think about?  CANNON!  Pinkie Pie murdering Rainbow Dash?  CANNON!  Rainbow Dash coming to our world and befriending a human?  CANNON!

[Scootaloodle 1,623]

I don’t think the show really makes it clear: I’d say it could be the present day with more modern stuff occasionally thrown in when needed, just the way ponies in this show/story etc live there lives is just more traditional in many ways and the retro stuff makes the feel and look of the show more interesting.

 

Like how in Harry Potter stories: when Harrys in the muggle world it seems to me like the present day. But in the wizard world it’s all old school, and for what I gather he didn’t go through a time portal in the story.

 

Similar: in Equastia girls, in the parallel world they got the same things us humans in 21^st century earth use such as mobile/cell phones, busses, computers, internet and photocopiers. All of which they don’t have in Equastia, and I didn’t think Twilight went back or forward in time in the portal.

 

Anyway that’s my take on it

[An Old Head 4,816]

Well, what do we already know? We know that Equestria is on Earth - Pinkie Pie says in Hearth Warming's Eve "News flash for you cookie, the Earth is round". Practical technology seems to switch from things as simple as drawn carriages, to handheld cameras like the ones in Green Isn't Your Colour. A lot of creatures are around that don't exist in the real world, like dragons and griffons...

 

Could it not be that the show is set thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands, of years into the future? Where humanity has died out and left remnants of their past (the cameras and film reels being uncovered relics from their society), where evolution has allowed the existence of griffons and dragons, and where the apparent aptitude of ponies as a race has led them to become the dominant species. In fact, perhaps it were those pieces of human existence that allowed ponies such as Pinkie Pie to know how Sherlock acted in S2E24; and perhaps Lyra sits on park benches like she does because she too uncovered lost photos of humans doing the same!

 

And how about the frequency of buried gems? Could that be the same; the extinction of humanity requiring that people hide their valuables in stashes - or in the caves where the Diamond Dogs live - in order to keep them for if they survived some world-endangering apocalypse? Plus, different types of technology are shown as the series progresses - for example, instead of a drawn carriage, S2E15 introduced a locomotive, which could have been abandoned by humans and re-powered with the Flim Flam brothers' unicorn magic. Possibilities are exploding to mind at the moment... but does anyone think that this scenario might be the case?

[Scootalove 10,689]

I can't really tell which time period that the My Little Pony universe is in since, it is basically imaginary. The universe itself has many inventions and other elements from the past like locomotives, castles, and modern things like microwaves and restaurants. There are other times where the show shows mythology and creatures that don't exist in the modern world.

 

There are many theories about which time period that the universe is in, but it analyzes the technology and concept that the universe has when it comes to advanced technology or technology that we used in the past. You could say that the universe shows examples from the time periods in history in the world that we live in from the past, present, and future. But I think that the universe itself is in the Medieval time period and the Industrial Revolution.

[Rainbow Dash Loyalty 1,275]

The MLP Universe is pretty weird to me....I  know that there's a steam train/locomotive in which they've traveled on a couple of times, and there are castles, villages and huts for everyone to live in. Which leaves me thinking that they live around the medieval ages, but the thing is that there are some moments that go towards the future and back.

For example in the episode MMMystery on the friendship express Pinkie Pie was making up stories about the chefs on how they 'destroyed' the cake, where you see Donut Joe playing as a secret agent with high-technology equipment like lasers. Even though it was a fake story, how would they know about futuristic technology like lasers?

 

Or in the episode May the Best Pet Win Fluttershy was helping Rainbow Dash find her new pet, in which she said she wanted a pet to be fast like a 'bullet' to keep up with her, and how Tank was...well like a 'Tank'. Does that mean there are tanks and bullets in Equestria? 

 

Because in that case, Buffaloes and Western Ponies were fighting with apple pies to defend their town instead of using bullets in the episode Over a Barrel...So yeah... pretty confusing to me xP

[Veigar the Dark Lord 36]

Well, that question has a lot of answers...first of all, given the design of the houses and everything, including Princess' Celestia's castle; it seems to take place in a medieval time. What supports that, is the lack of electricity that has been shown throughout the episodes (Of course, i do not count that one time where Twilight strapped Pinkie Pie on a table with science stuff as that is just a fourth wall breaker.)

 

However, i cease to agree that is in the Middle Ages anymore when the cinema on the third season appeared, along with all the fashion stuff and nowadays stuff (Ow...i repeated that twice.) I think in fact one needs to situate the Universe in whichever time you may want to. You really have to take in mind that some jokes are set to modern times...but that's it. The main Universe is Middle Age, then it deforms into a mass of conjoined timelines.

[RazzyJam 1,519]

They are technically in a Victorian era of technological and cultural development. Its the golden age of the 1800s~ Imperialism and Monarchies flourish in power and stature, and the industrial revolution is in full swing! Telegrams send messages across the nation in just under 24 hours! The wealthy take lavish blimp rides around Canterlot, and the poor can hop a train ride across Equestria for only a few bits, and the ride only lasts 3 days! 

 

Progress is in the air in Equestria, and it smells wonderful (and sulfurous!) 

 

We can back this up with other historical findings. For example, we know that Equestria has been around for over 1000 years. Canterlot castle, then, is most likely half that age. The original Royal castle appears to have been destroyed, as shown in the second episode in season 1 (the ruins where the elements of harmony were found).

 

In my mind, the Canterlot castle reminds me a lot of the architecture seen in russia, especially St. Basil's Cathederal. St Basil's began construction in the early 1500's, and was finished around 1600 AD. The Victorian era in our world lasted from about 1837-1901. Using the numbers from my previous assumption, This would make the Victorian era a highly plausible theory for the age the MLP universe is in. 

 

Of course, the dates are highly subjective, they may not even have the same length day or year as Earth. However, it is safe to assume that the amount of time it would take is comparable. 

Edited July 4, 2013 by WingedRatchet

[Harmonic Revelations 8,835]

That question doesn't have a definite answer unless the writers say it does. For example, while the ponies don't have electricity, they have night vision goggles.

 

 

And while they don't have space travel, or even advanced observing technology like satellites, they have a very intimate understanding of space-related science.

 

 

While they don't have automobiles that normal ponies seem to use, they have construction workers who use advanced equipment, including a crane. And yet they don't appear to have a very advanced economic system, they still manage to have these kinds of building projects.

 

Another weird thing is that even though they don't appear to have paved roads, and thus often don't use concrete, they have dams.

 

 

 

For these reasons, I'd say it's kind of a mix that has no direct comparison to our world.

Edited July 4, 2013 by Harmonic Revelations

[Nerdy Luigi 2,065]

It has elements of more fantasy like eras, but still modern things do exist.

In other words, it has no relation to our own timeline.

[soniccam1 242]

The answer to your question about this is.

If they do have electricity, it would most likely be in the 1999's to now depending on what type of object.

Vinyl Scratch's turn tables are in the time period of the 21st century.

The rest could be from older times or recent times.

 

Also Magic is used as an alternative source for electricity. 

[hawkflame 3,310]

The answer is all of the above.  They clearly have some sort of internal combustion engine (the train), but no automobiles or airplanes that we've seen.  They even have things like movie theaters, Vinyl's turntables, arcade video games, microphones, etc. but their only means of taking to the air outside of magic or pegasi is a hot air balloon.  It's a mish mash of things, so to pinpoint a time period is completely futile. 

 

I don't mind it that way, though.  The anachronistic aspect of the show is part of the charm.

[--Thunder Bolt-- 534]

Before asking what technological level Equestria is "at," let's take a moment to consider the question of why, in our world, a society can be said to be "at" some particular technological level ("medieval," "1980's," etc.) in the first place.  In our world, industrial depth is necessary to produce any given technology.  "Industrial depth" is the ability to build the tools to build the tools to build the device in question, in terms of resources, precursor technologies, science, and economics.  To build Vinyl Scratch's record players, we need to have an entire economic network of mining, materials processing, mass manufacturing, transport, and marketing.  In order to produce a single record player or arcade game, our whole society has to be organized in a certain way, at a certain minimum level of scientific and economic development.  This is not the case in Equestria.  

 

Equestria has three major differences from our world that create its odd (to us) mix of technology: the cutie mark system, magic, and its cosmology.

 

Cutie Marks: Since every pony has, and is encouraged to discover, their own individual talent and make that the core of "making a living," Equestrian society is rigged against economics of scale.  "Economics of scale" refers to the fact that (in our world) a large, industrialized operation (manufacturing company, large corporate farm) can churn out products at a lower per-unit cost than a home workshop or family farm.  Economics of scale is a great boon for us in many ways (how much time/effort/cost would it take for you to produce a bicycle from raw materials by yourself?), it comes at the cost of regimentation.  Large companies organized to maximize output on a mass scale require hierarchical systems of control, standardization of work (assembly lines, etc.), layers of management, and so on.  In short: lots of jobs that suck. 

 

In Equestria, the cutie mark system encourages ponies to work independently or in small teams.  It is uncommon to see any operation so large that there are too many participants to know each other personally.  Work is individual and artisan-scale.  If you want cakes, you get them from the Cakes, not from Hostess.  Equestria is basically a great big, year-round Burning Man festival.  Small is Beautiful, literally.  In such an economy, technologies are produced by individuals or small groups, not multinational corporations.  Vinyl Scratch's DJ gear was probably made by some local tinker, if not by Vinyl herself.  Thus, there is no need for transport systems that can ship millions of tons of raw materials to factories, and millions of record players out of them.  Economics is local.

 

Aside: Grimdark Speculation: The cutie mark system only applies to ponies.  It has been portrayed in the show that Applejack's livestock (the cows and sheep, at least) are sapient people that she and her family own, herd around, keep in pens, and exploit economically.  In a word: slaves.  The language and place-names are aggressively pony-centric, deliberately excluding other species from the sphere of "people who matter," even though we see them talk, wear clothes, etc..  Such a stark and pervasive division suggests a purpose: providing constant reminders to the underclasses who is in charge.  It is possible that Equestrian society could resemble Dubai: a relatively small population of wealthy citizens (in Dubai's case, due to oil revenues rather than magic) served by a non-citizen underclass.  There could be sweatshops, mines and factories where sheep, goats, cows, etc. are worked to death under miserable conditions, and we just haven't seen them on screen. 

 

Magic: In addition to being able to perform many technological functions directly and serve as a power source, magic can replace industrial depth.  We are shown that magic can turn apples into oranges--and by accident, animals into orange-hybrids that somehow continue living.  A properly trained tinkerer unicorn with the right cutie mark can probably transmute raw materials into plastics, precision machine parts, even microchips, without any need for a vast industrial infrastructure.  What this means is that a technological artifact like a record player or video game console can, in principle, be produced by a single craftspony or small team of friends on a hobbyist scale.  There is no need to make hundreds of thousands or millions of them in order to turn a profit; you can make a few for your friends, and maybe travel around a little like Flim and Flam. 

 

Cosmology: Equestria is very different from our world.  The Sun and Moon are artifacts controlled by individual beings.  They move around Equestri-Earth, along with some other celestial objects (there's a glimpse of a solar system model in one of the episodes), probably much like the geocentric solar system presented in Ptolemy's Almagest.  In S1E1, we see four "stars" converge on the Moon to release Luna.  This shows that "stars" are not gigantic naturally-occurring fusion reactors, but smaller light sources that may also be (or be under the control of) individual beings, probably pony-shaped.  Ponies operate the weather, seasons, animal migrations, etc..  This means that Equestria's known universe could not have predated the existence of ponies.  In short: Equestria is an artificial world.  We have little reason to think that it would have much in the way of fossil fuels or petroleum, since those are products of specific geological forces and deep time, neither of which may be present in Equestria.  Steam trains could run on wood, charcoal, peat, or other sources of biomass, but ecological limits (and the small-scale cutie mark economy) would make those fuels too rare to power a society of mass-industrial transport like we have. 

 

This is why we don't see freeways and streets choked with automobiles.  Automobiles are the products of a particular sort of civilization at a certain minimum level of industrial depth.  They cannot exist as a common mode of transport apart from mass production (to standardize vehicle production, safety features, operation, etc.), a national transportation infrastructure of roads and freeways (in turn requiring a centralized state and bureaucracy to fund, build, and maintain it), an infrastructure of fueling stations (and their industrial depth--oil wells, refineries, pipelines, tankers, trucks), urban and suburban areas built around parking lots, and so on.  All of this in turn requires and facilitates a society in which all of this transportation is necessary.  In Equestria, it isn't.

 

Speculation: Equestria as the Product of Lost Superscience: The fact that everything from the Sun and sky, to clouds and rainbows requires pony operators to work implies that the EquestriVerse is a construct, a machine.  We see little evidence of any such thing as "nature," i.e., a self-regulating ecosystem operating without any need for management from sapient beings.  The Everfree Forest might qualify, but we don't know for a fact that its rainfall, animal populations, etc. aren't managed by someone.  It is notable that the ponies are deathly afraid of it, as if the concept of a place that isn't pony-managed is completely alien to them. 

 

So, we could speculate that some time in the distant past, an extremely-advanced pony civilization saw that its world was dying.  They mobilized the unified cooperative effort of their entire people to build a great generation-ship large enough to provide a home for many, if not all, of their people.  In time, the knowledge of Equestria's true nature was lost.  Their unicorn-horn tractor-beam/forcefield/replicator/transporter system synthetic-biology genetic enhancements were assumed to be ordinary body parts, and the things they could do became "magic."  The ponies still retain traditional knowledge of how to operate the Ship's life-support systems, but they have forgotten the technological basis of what they're doing.  Perhaps the Crystal Empire is a last remnant of the architecture of the Builders, or even the Ship's command bridge.

 

Network Effects and the Differential Adoption of Technologies:

 

Equestria's small-scale, localized craft economies favor the adoption of some "modern" technologies, while barring the adoption of others.  We see film projectors, microphones, speakers, computational electronics (arcade games, medical devices), but no telephones, televisions, or internet, despite the fact that they are all based on the same science.  A (land-line) telephone network is speakers, microphones, and connecting wires, all of which are implicit in Vinyl Scratch's DJ setup.  Why don't they exist? 

 

The technologies we don't see in Equestria all have one thing in common: they are all strongly dependent on the network effect for their value.  A single telephone is completely useless.  Two telephones and a connecting link (say, between Twilight's library and Celestia's throneroom) are somewhat more useful, but telephones are only really useful when everybody has one.  The more people there are connected to a telephone network, the more useful your own telephone is.  Likewise, for the internet.  Television is the same: who would want to run a television station if there's only one family with a TV?

 

Network-effect technologies require mass production (there have to be a lot of them), mass transportation (mass production = economics of scale = big, centralized operations making and transporting millions of products), and standardization (all of the individual phones, TV's, iGadgets, etc. have to be compatible with their networks).  Equestria's local, artisan economy does not favor this sort of production and distribution model.  The advanced technologies we do see are precisely the ones that do not depend on the network effect for their utility, or are much less network-dependent.  Vinyl's DJ setup would be just as valuable, if not more so, if it was the only thing like it in all of Equestria.  She uses it for local performance.  Film projectors, record players, etc. are also used in performances for local audiences.  I don't recall seeing a record player used for solitary home entertainment.  Instead, they seem to be used most frequently to provide musical back-up for a singer.  In other words, these devices are used in service of local performers, rather than as output nodes for a networked Music Industry^tm.

 

The records and films themselves invoke the network effect, but to a lesser degree.  Most of the record players we see are Steampunk-era crank-operated ones, whose network effects were sustainable under a society without ubiquitous mass-scale transport.  The film projector we've only seen once IIRC, used to play a newsreel explaining how the pegasus-powered water cycle worked.  This is the sort of thing the government of Cloudsdale could have produced in small numbers and distributed to local areas (perhaps only Ponyville, if they don't harvest water from other reservoirs).  The film was shown in an ad hoc format, indicating that film projectors are not a frequently-used consumer product with a film and movie-theater industry depending on network effects for its existence.

 

In addition, pony society (again, probably due in large part to the cutie mark system) tends to favor live public performance over recorded entertainment.  Even ponies who are not cutie marked performers, like Twilight and Fluttershy, are quite skilled in song and dance by our standards.  The record players they use could easily have been produced by local craftsponies, with the records themselves made and recorded locally.

 

Other advanced tech, like medical equipment, Twilight's scientific instruments, and so on are far more network-independent than the advanced technologies we don't see in Equestria.

[Nerdy Luigi 2,065]

Really, Likely turn of the 20th century, without media due to Celestia having a possible need of control over Equestria's influences

[Dark Horn 430]

It seems to me as if different parts of Equestria are in different stages of technology. We've seen Twilight have some pretty advanced stuff, as well as a couple of other ponies, yet not very often, and not to do anything important.