While you are correct about the interactions of technology and society, those interactions are often subtle, complex and far from the inevitabilities that many assume. Decent sanitation, for example, has a bigger effect on population, and particularly infant mortality, than all other technologies combined - and yes, I'm including both agricultural and medical technology in 'all'. Yet few people are more than vaguely aware of it, and if it ever takes pride of place in a story, there's always a punchline at the end.
I also have to say that the example you give probably explains why you encounter difficulties with world-building: it shows a deep ignorance [forgive the word, but there isn't a better one] of how our world came to be, and without a good idea of how this world works it can be hard to put your own together. Fire, I fear, predates agriculture by 1/2 - 2 million years, depending on who you listen to and what evidence they're looking at. The wheel, OTOH, _post_dates agriculture by anything up to 8,000 years [again, depending on who and what -dating for both technologies is uncertain]. Neither fire nor the wheel is a necessary technology for agriculture. It is certainly true that the use of fire makes processing many agricultural products for consumption [a.k.a. cooking them] much more practical, but it is easy to list high-value items for which it is unnecessary, and trivial to build an agri-system that could be based on such items. Wheeled implements didn't enter common use until the later middle ages, and the widespread use of wheeled vehicles to transport produce is only slightly older - for any distance more than an hour's walk, it didn't start until the Romans began paving over the world in the late 1st millenium BC. So long-distance wheeled transport is an enabler for modern cities, but not particularly for agriculture. Or even for trade, come to think of it. One can easily imagine an aquatic culture with agriculture and long-distance trade where fire is impossible and the wheel superfluous. Getting them off-planet into an interstellar civilisation, OTOH, it more challenging.
Michael Everett wrote:
Even with an idea, writing skill, grammar and syntax, it's more common to fail to complete a story than it is to complete it.
I myself have a file of stories that started well, but for one reason or another, I had to stop.Abandoned Story Concepts
Compcent (Sci-fi/4 chapters) - A resurrected astronaut and an alien computer return to Earth after World War III.
Cyber Dragon (Sci-fi/3 chapters) - Technology can perform miracles, even supplying new bodies, albeit ones that are not human...
Pridelands (Fantasy/2 chapters) - An expansionist empire discovers that it may not be the strongest nation after all.
Angel Flight (Sci-fi/6 chapters) - A scientific experimental subject gets transported to a new world where he must make a new life for himself.
Guardian Monster (Sci-fi/9 chapters) - An runaway teenager makes first contact with a stranded alien scout.
Devil's Island (Fantasy/8 chapters) - A noble demon seeks to resurrect ancient races in the modern era.
Each would-be story came about because I had an idea. World--building was an issue, requiring me to use several pages of A4 to note important things like basic history, traditions and the reasons for them, basic rules or societies and any side-effects it may have, technology and how it causes society to change (and it does. The Wheel and Fire alone changed society from hunter-gatherer to farming-based). However, in every case, the story was abandoned either because I lost where I was going with the plot (didn't write it down, proof I can be an idiot!), realization that I was going to close to something already published or discovering I was about to write myself into a corner.
Even though I do have completed stories on-line, my fails outnumber my completions.
I'm sure RFC has his own file of "might have beens". It would be fascinating to have a peek at them...
Edit - all linked story-fragments are available if anyone wants to adopt them. I'd quite enjoy seeing what a competent writer could do with them...
