#ko-metru

[shinramakoreactor]

[0m3g45n1p3r4lph4]

Okay but imagine if games could replace the bios startup logos like the N64 and SNES had.

Imagine if we'd actually got that PS2 City of Legends game, and it replaced those Memory Blocks with Ko-Metru Knowledge Towers?

[demitsorou]

:thinking:

[elaho]

Metru Nui and Paper

It seem strange to write a post about paper. I mean, for the most part, paper seems like something we don't really think or talk about in day-to-day life.

Even though we don't pay much attention to it, paper's been a part of our lives for hundreds of years. Despite everything becoming more and more digital, we still rely heavily on paper. From Books, to fliers and notebooks, post-it's, stickers, signs, billboards, labels, drawing pads, price tags, etc.- paper is all around us.

In the Western World, we've become so familiar with paper that I think we have difficulty imagining life without it- which is why the discovery that Metru Nui not only did not use paper on a daily basis, but that paper was something strange and foreign to most Matoran, came as a quite the surprise to me. "How could people think of paper as something foreign?" I remember myself thinking.  Now that I have the opportunity to go more in-depth into the world of Bionicle, I definitely want to delve into more detail regarding the use of paper, especially in Metru Nui. 

Ko-Metru and Scholar Assistants:

While I was doing some digging into Ko-Matoran jobs in Ko-Metru, I thought it was strange that Scholars required assistants (or messengers) to deliver messages back and forth between Knowledge Towers. I remember thinking: "Isn't Metru Nui a city of technology? Why don't they just message each other with a text or something?".

But then it occurred to me that maybe they're sending messages the old fashioned way- through paper. But why paper messages? It would be much simpler to message digitally...wouldn't it?

In The Halfway, Ko-Metru is just below Ga-Metru in terms of wealth and importance. While they don't have as much in terms opportunity and resources, they have the most relative to their function when compared to the other districts (Ta, Po, Onu, Le). They have access to huge, expensive telescopes and a variety of other devices that help them do their jobs, and from what I could tell from the images online, technology seems to play an important role in maintaining structural integrity. Meaning, it wouldn't be through inaccessibility that they wouldn't be using digital devices.

So I decided to take a deeper look at Ko-Matoran society and how their beliefs might impact their actions.

Mentality:

The mentality or philosophy of the Ko-Matoran also seemed to be an important factor, as the one thing that seemed to be a heavy emphasis in Ko-Metru above all else was: Silence.

(So much so that the Ko-Metru Vahki would arrest anyone who made too much noise. It was known widely as "The Silent Metru" across the city)

It would make sense that Ko-Matoran scholars, in their efforts to preserve silence, would choose the traditional method of paper writing over technological means.

Tech can be noisy- and distracting; it would make sense that writing with paper would help keep better focus, and writing things manually has also shown to help with memory retention.

Enviornment:

The location and environment of Ko-Metru also struck me as important, since environment can play a huge role in shaping a culture's method of documentation; in particular, the kind of climate and weather Ko-Metru would normally experience: the cold, the ice, and the snow.

And something clicked almost instantly:

Having grown up in an area of Canada where winter snowstorms were frequent, losing power was a common (and often unpredictable) thing.

Ko-Metru, being in a constant state of winter, would probably have it's fair share of shitty, snowy weather; if scholars were relying on technology in order to document and record all their findings, they could lose their data or be unable to access online resources until the power came back on (if at all).

It would make sense that the primary means of recording, communicating, and preserving findings would be through tangible means (i.e. paper), then inputted into a digital database for city-wide use, as necessary.

Conclusion:

It all made sense now. Writing with paper was the most reliable, most convenient method of communication between towers. It was the best way to preserve silence, improve memory, and continue work even in harsh conditions.

Ko-matoran, you are some smart cookies.

Paper Availability and Usage:

In terms of how often paper was used throughout Metru Nui, (looking at how it's described in both the books and movies), from what I can tell most Matoran haven't come across paper before:

For example, whoever found the hidden Bohrok document under the floor in the Great Temple thought it was strange that the message was written on a thin sheet (paper) instead of carved in stone.

Another example is when Lhikan gave out the Toa stones to the pre-Toa Metru, wrapped each stone in a map made of paper.* When he hands them out, the only one he mentions the map to is Nuju ("Follow the map, Thinker"). Why would he mention the map specifically?**

With all this being said, I think it makes the most sense that paper would be almost exclusively used by Ko-Matoran Scholars for their studies and (primary) means of communication between them. All written records would then be bound and stored in the Great Library in the Metru, where Scholars would send messengers to retrieve them, as needed.

End Notes:

*More on this later

**This may be a stretch, but I think because as a Scholar, Nuju was already familiar with paper maps- he just needed a reminder from Lhikan to stay focused on the present. ("No one could look further forward without seeing what was in plain sight then dear Nuju" -Turaga Vakama).

Everyone else just seemed to look at the paper-wrapped-parcel like "what the hell is this?" and just kinda figured it out later. Dume even reached out his hand towards Vakama's hidden Toa Stone (covered by the map), as if thinking "What the hell is paper doing here?"

[toacody]

Nuju Metru, Esq.

"I say, shall we take a stroll among the Knowledge Towers?”

Source

Creator: SEDVR

[legend-as-old-as-time]

Headcanon that for the Great Beings, one of their most important discoveries about energized protodermis and its derivatives?

It was that it can circumvent / ignore physics as they knew them and create “cold” as its own element. It keeps stable by absorbing the energy of heat and “creating” more cold.

I’m not good in physics but you can’t “make” cold. Cold is the absence of heat, and the heat has to go somewhere else for something to become cold.

This is how fridges and freezers work. The heat gets artificially removed and dumped outside.

And when something is cold, it often usually warms over time because it’s an absense of heat that will be filled.

Overheating is a huge limit for many mechanical and electrical devices and how they work. The generated heat can deform or even melt the devices.

So they need mechanisms like a ventilation system to dump the heat that they generate; or a liquid that cools the heating parts and the liquid must be constantly replaced and / or recooled.

And those systems need space which they might not have depending on the device and / or location.

You also have to consider how you remove the extra heat. Maybe it can be used for something else like heating rooms, but it can’t just spread inside a building.

Having suddenly access to something - let’s call it advanced science or magic, we don’t know - that remains at a freezing temperature for long stretches of time? A material that replenishes itself by partly absorbing the heat diffusing into its area of effect and transforming it?

That makes a lot of new things possible.

Second headcanon: Ko-Metru serves double duty for Mata Nui’s brain in a mental sense and in a physical / mechanical sense.

The Ko-Matoran read the stars = signals of Mata Nui’s brain, interpret them, and send them ahead for further processing.

Ko-Metru serves as a “heat sink” to counterbalance Ta-Metru’s massive forges. It cools the entire head and neck area of the GSR. Otherwise the systems necessary to pour out the surplus of heat into space would’ve needed to be even bigger and crowded out many other important parts that keep the GSR functional.

[nerift4832]

Pixel art of the Ko-Metru great disk!

[bioniclechicken]

Ko-Metru?