So, I was thinking about this as it pertains to actual gear, and it occurs to me that anything that we have today that didn't exist in 1980 (to pick a round number, now almost 45 years ago) ought to count as TL8 gear. So what do we have today that we didn't have
commercially, for civilians, in 1980 that we have in 2020, a short list:
- Cell phones that can act as computer terminals (I suppose cell phones of a sort existed in 1980, but were primitive and not widespread)
- Internet (Same, ARPANet existed in 1977, but was not publically accessible and filled with everyone.)
- GPS (Same, military-only, though it apparently was operational for the military in 1968 in a primitive incarnation, and was made available to civilians in 1983, so maybe GPS is TL7. I am inlined to count 1980's GPS gear as TL-1, though, as it was pretty primitive.)
- Electric Vehicles (They've been around forever, but only recently become commercial.)
- Compact Disks (we didn't have them until 1982, though technically laser disks predated them, and now they're passe, it seems.)
- TCAS (the aircraft system that keeps you from bumping into other planes in the sky, in development in the 1980's, now ubiquitous). and a lot of other safety avionics like TAWS (which keeps you from bumping into the ground, or tries very hard to), and in general the whole modern aircraft cockpit has changed from a zillion guages to a bank of computer screens (often depicting guages, ironically).
- Body Armor, which I know very little about, has come a very long way since 1980's primitive flak vests, and is now commercially available to citizens in many places (local laws vary wildly).
These are the first things that come to mind. I know I'm missing things, but a one-word summary of developments at a modern TL seemed inadequate. The computer game civilization divides tech advances into bite-sized chunks, one tech at a time, and groups them into eras akin to Tech Levels, so maybe we could make a map like that. I have begun but it turns out the one from the game is weird in places, or is keyed to certain events. I have included something like TL 0 and TL1 from the Civ 5 tech tree with wikipedia dates for certain technologies.
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TLs seem like a good way to know at a glance what a world can support, and in 1980, it was a useful way to represent a region with different access to technology: If the US was TL7 in 1980, a lot of Europe was TL6, and a lot of the rest of the world was back at TL5 or before. But different planets may prioritize different parts of a TL, or may have TL (x) in one thing, and TL (x-1) in others.
I guess my main point is that TL is far more nuanced than a single number can possibly represent. If the listed TL is the peak TL supportable on a world, how do you denote how narrow or broad that support is? Do you have everything at that TL? Just one thing at that TL? The TL linked to Pop makes a lot of sense to me, too, and I think it may get adopted IMTU.
I think I have diverged a bit from the main point of the discussion, but I am curious how this is dealt with in other's games?