Tech Level Zero

[atpollard]

A poor choice of words on my part. Perhaps "discovering" or "employing" or "making use of" rather than "making a leap of logic" would be better wording. I realize that the use or non-use of a particular set of technologies is not a measure of Intelligence.

Just to be clear, I was not accusing or disagreeing with anything that you said. I was just pointing out a common logic flaw that tends to attach itself any time people link the words ‘Technology’ and ‘Advanced/Primative’.

An adventurer walks into a starport bar and sees a barbarian with his spear leaned against the wall and a spacer with a gauss rifle near his chair playing cards … which one would you instinctively guess is more intelligent? I would (probably incorrectly) assume that the spacer was smarter. After all the guy from a TL 12 world must know more than the guy from a TL 2 world, right?

While I agree with your observations above, I think it is important to keep Technological Level distinct from cultural considerations, as far as it is possible to do so.

Even if a society has deliberately chosen to not utilize a given set of technologies due to cultural considerations, I would still rate their TL based on what they actually are choosing to employ. In the OTU, there are a number of worlds that have deliberately turned their backs on technology to lead a simpler lifestyle. Even though these cultures are quite aware of more advanced technologies, their worlds' UWPs reflect what they actually utilize in practice, rather than what they could choose to employ given a different cultural outlook.

Or have I entirely missed the point you are trying to make?

I have a nagging suspicion that the cultural and technological progression may not be truly independent. It seems that every few TLs, some critical decision point is reached where the society as a whole must either embrace a new technology and completely transform the character of the society and how the people define themselves … or not.

TL 0-1 seems like one of those critical decision points. The decision to settle into permanent communities, grow crops, and pursue infrastructure intensive crafts (it is hard to smelt ore while following the herds). So the Social decision makes the Technological tools possible … and the combination changes virtually everything about how the people live and work.

TL 3-4 seems like another critical point. Archeology indicates that ancient Greece and Rome had tools as intricate as any 18 th century clockmaker. They had the tools to build a crude railroad, but they never did. I suspect that Rome was not prepared to transform its agricultural core identity to an Industrial society. The tools were there for Rome to jump to TL 4, but not the social revolution to enable those tools to be exploited.
Fast forward to the 1800’s. Society had been changed by the Enlightenment, broad literacy and a love for new mechanical technology. People were willing to mechanize farms (to reduce farm labor) and transform from a nation of farmers (80% of the population at TL 3) to a nation of factory workers (70% of the population at TL 4).

Beyond this it becomes more speculative, but I think that the shift to automated production is another critical period, as will be the shift to a space-based economy and the later transition to a holographic VR society … which I ballpark IMTU at TL 6-7, TL 9-10 and TL 12-13.

So I tend to see TLs as a series of Evolutionary changes followed by an abrupt Revolutionary change. Within the evolutionary steps, Tool^2 probably dominates. At the Revolutionary steps, the social impact cannot be ignored.

Here is an interesting fact to think about. A modern Amish Farm operates at about TL 4 and produces crops at a cost per bushel slightly lower than a modern commercial farm (operating at TL 7-8). The Amish farm requires dramatically more labor and produces far less per acre, but its operating costs are also significantly lower. Take from that factoid whatever you wish.

 

[whulorigan]

[FONT=arial,helvetica]

[/FONT][FONT=arial,helvetica][FONT=arial,helvetica]Originally Posted by atpollard:
[/FONT]I have a nagging suspicion that the cultural and technological progression may not be truly independent. It seems that every few TLs, some critical decision point is reached where the society as a whole must either embrace a new technology and completely transform the character of the society and how the people define themselves … or not.

TL 0-1 seems like one of those critical decision points. The decision to settle into permanent communities, grow crops, and pursue infrastructure intensive crafts (it is hard to smelt ore while following the herds). So the Social decision makes the Technological tools possible … and the combination changes virtually everything about how the people live and work.

TL 3-4 seems like another critical point. Archeology indicates that ancient Greece and Rome had tools as intricate as any 18 th century clockmaker. They had the tools to build a crude railroad, but they never did. I suspect that Rome was not prepared to transform its agricultural core identity to an Industrial society. The tools were there for Rome to jump to TL 4, but not the social revolution to enable those tools to be exploited.

Fast forward to the 1800’s. Society had been changed by the Enlightenment, broad literacy and a love for new mechanical technology. People were willing to mechanize farms (to reduce farm labor) and transform from a nation of farmers (80% of the population at TL 3) to a nation of factory workers (70% of the population at TL 4).

Beyond this it becomes more speculative, but I think that the shift to automated production is another critical period, as will be the shift to a space-based economy and the later transition to a holographic VR society … which I ballpark IMTU at TL 6-7, TL 9-10 and TL 12-13.

So I tend to see TLs as a series of Evolutionary changes followed by an abrupt Revolutionary change. Within the evolutionary steps, Tool^2 probably dominates. At the Revolutionary steps, the social impact cannot be ignored.[/FONT][FONT=arial,helvetica][FONT=arial,helvetica]

Those are excellent observations, and I suspect that you are correct.

Note, however, that I am not saying that cultural and technological progressions are [/FONT][/FONT][FONT=arial,helvetica][FONT=arial,helvetica][FONT=arial,helvetica][FONT=arial,helvetica] independent[/FONT][/FONT], but rather simply that how the IISS rates their TL-code in a UWP "snapshot" would be independent of cultural considerations or prejudices as far as is possible. I was relating my point to a prior series of posts which raised the question as to what characterizes TL-0 as compared to TL-1.

I would note also that in T5 the TL-chart does employ "fractional" TL listings for some eras. So it is perfectly valid to say that a given culture is at (roughly) TL-"0.7" in a full world write-up (though the UWP code will still say TL-0).

I think we are in agreement, but just analyzing the issue form different angles.
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[/FONT][FONT=arial,helvetica][FONT=arial,helvetica]

[/FONT]Here is an interesting fact to think about. A modern Amish Farm operates at about TL 4 and produces crops at a cost per bushel slightly lower than a modern commercial farm (operating at TL 7-8). The Amish farm requires dramatically more labor and produces far less per acre, but its operating costs are also significantly lower. Take from that factoid whatever you wish.

It is interesting that you chose that particular example, as I was born and raised in Lancaster, PA (though I am not Amish).

[/FONT]

 

[FrackinA]

Interesting thread.

I think that a social decision to pursue a simpler existence wouldn't survive long if there is contact with outside societies. One generation may reject the stress of technological civilization, but will subsequent generations stick with that?

But natural limitations on development won't change just because people want technology. I always viewed world creation dice modifiers as a guideline (factors that apply in most, but not necessarily all, situations. A standard atmosphere world with plentiful water could support a large population, but what if the following factors held:
- isolated from trade (too far a jump from the nearest systems, no gas giant (though water refueling is possible) so there just isn't much point in going there, or the system is interdicted
- limited or no metals available - tools are made of wood, stone or bone
- high humidity and active bacteria/insects break down/rot wooden structures, hard to establish permanent habitations.
- long growing season produces an abundance of food (fruits, vegetables, fish, etc.

It's hard to develop technology without suitable materials for making tools and structures and, with abundant food, there is less need for the technology. This would support a Referee's decision to apply an extra -2 or -3 to the tech level roll (or just assign the number).

If local conditions were suitable for growing some luxury foods or illicit drugs, there may be some enterprising individuals breaking the blockade or crossing the void to exploit the opportunity.

And these enterprising businesspeople would bring tools of great value for the locals (any basic metal or plastic tools) or could build structures that don't rot (plastics, variations of construction foam/concrete). The tools would be durable but the locals would have no means to repair or duplicate them.

The travelers might construct a landing pad to ensure a dry surface to land on.

Maybe the agricultural experiment didn't pan out and the travelers left, but locals still live near the flattened landing pad, which they have marked with a ring of stones and maybe build mock starships out of wood or other materials and carry out rituals to attract the starships back.

Yeah, I'm thinking about the cargo cults in the Pacific.

No active starport facilities, just a very large cement pad ringed with rocks where people pray for the return of the star gods.

 

[Dagrill]

I have this mental image that I just can't shake.

So I went looking for a TL 0 world in the Third Imperium ... and found none.
Looking at the official maps that I have, TL might as well just start at TL 3 for all the difference it would make to the OTU.
So does anyone know of a TL 0 world that I missed?

Of greater importance to me (since I can change nothing about the OTU)

Hi,

Not in the 3I, but look at Trojan 1402 Selshor E430576-0 population around 950,000 surviving without a breathable atmosphere...

Regards

David

 

[atpollard]

I think that a social decision to pursue a simpler existence wouldn't survive long if there is contact with outside societies. One generation may reject the stress of technological civilization, but will subsequent generations stick with that?

Thanks for the input.

The thing that I keep thinking of is the Amish (who seem to have successfully maintained TL 4 while the world marches on).

What you said agrees well with the Arctic cultures (Inuit) where environment dictates technology ... use what works.

 

[Dagrill]

I have this mental image that I just can't shake.

OK, I see Selshor's already been spotted

How about TROJ 0739 Hkeleiakh C310000-0 population 7

Very hardy Aslan!

Regards

David

 

[whulorigan]

How about TROJ 0739 Hkeleiakh C310000-0 population 7

Very hardy Aslan!

Just to be clear: That is not a population digit of 7, but rather the Pop digit of "0" and Pop mutliplier of "7", meaning the entire population is 7 individuals.

Those IISS guys keep really accurate records!

 

[Limburger59]

Great discussion.

The population exponent is 5, which per the World Creation Charts gives you a +1 on the Tech Level die roll, planet size 4 gives you a +1, and atmosphere of 3 also gives you a +1 on the die roll. The Tech Level die roll will be 1D6 plus 3, so the MINIMUM Tech Level would be 4, with a range of 4 to 9.

That is the minimum BEFORE the epidemic, civil war, massive EM pulse from the solar flare...

 

[atpollard]

Not in the 3I, but look at Trojan 1402 Selshor E430576-0 population around 950,000 surviving without a breathable atmosphere...

The lack of air sort of bothers me a little ...

... actually, more than a little. (sigh)

Selshor was great (except for the lack of air thing) - it had a real population!
I have some difficulty accepting Pop 0 and TL 0 as a settlement.
I mean 9 researchers living alone on a world at TL 12, sort-of makes sense, but 9 starfaring hunter gatherers settling alone on a world maintaining zero population growth rubs my fur the wrong way.

 

[whulorigan]

The lack of air sort of bothers me a little ...

... actually, more than a little. (sigh)

Selshor was great (except for the lack of air thing) - it had a real population!

But Selshior does have a Very Thin atmosphere/non-tainted. It is a desert environment, however. Are you specifically looking for a world populated by humans, or would a non-human minor race that is adapted to a very thin atmosphere / desert environment work? (Or for that matter, a minor-race branch of Humaniti with a Bedouin-like culture that can handle much thinner atmospheres at certain low altitudes).

 

[atpollard]

But Selshior does have a Very Thin atmosphere/non-tainted. It is a desert environment, however. Are you specifically looking for a world populated by humans, or would a non-human minor race that is adapted to a very thin atmosphere / desert environment work? (Or for that matter, a minor-race branch of Humaniti with a Bedouin-like culture that can handle much thinner atmospheres at certain low altitudes).

Sorry, I got the Hydro and Atmo reversed.
Very thin air and non-human is a good find in my book.
It was worlds with NO AIR that I have more skepticism about.

 

[BlackBat242]

If the pop is low, then the world can be covered by a "very thin" atmosphere - with a few large very deep canyons whose bottom is 3,000 meters or more below the average surface, where the increased pressure means the atmosphere is only "thin".

 

[atpollard]

If the pop is low, then the world can be covered by a "very thin" atmosphere - with a few large very deep canyons whose bottom is 3,000 meters or more below the average surface, where the increased pressure means the atmosphere is only "thin".

That could be really interesting.

I was trying to think of what else might force a human population to avoid agriculture on an otherwise desirable planet, and realized that the South Pacific would also work as a model. A world with a Hydro of 9 might have only mountain-peak islands above sea level ... so fishing is easy and crops are hard.

 

[CosmicGamer]

Jungle areas so lush that without technological aid it is difficult to clear land.

A neighboring world will raid us any time we start producing any decent quantities.

Insects and other destructive pests who's population will keep growing as the fields grow.

This attracts birds, this attracts predators, this attracts larger predators.. Perhaps man is not the most dangerous predator on the planet.

 

[rancke]

Jungle areas so lush that without technological aid it is difficult to clear land.

Can lead to silviculture and eventually improved silviculture techniques.


Hans

 

[BlackBat242]

Yep... using small natural ground clearings to grow indirect-light-friendly plants in small quantities, caring for & nurturing useful trees (and plants that grow on them), keeping small groups of animals, etc.

This will support only small scattered groups of "farmers" due to the low "carrying capacity", with the groups meeting at reqular intervals to trade knowledge, produce, and eligible unmated youths (so as to prevent in-breeding*), and so on.

There could be groups that don't work their own areas, but who carry goods & info between these gatherings, linking lost of small networks into a larger regional/planetary social & informational net - each region or territory would have variations on religion/culture/etc, but would tolerate the trader groups anyway.



* Something primitive tribes do even without any organized knowledge of genetics, population diversity, etc.

 

[shaunhilburn]

I also have serious qualms about calling the period before the Bronze Age Tech Level 0, as prior to the Bronze Age, mankind had developed Agriculture, domesticated several types of animals, developed irrigation, was making pottery on a fairly large scale, and had developed permanent communities. They also had developed the spear-thrower or atlatl, the bow, fairly sophisticated art techniques, and were engaging in trade in such things as pottery, obsidian, and flint.

You're correct.

The LBB3 tech table doesn't indicate any metallurgy at TL 0. The earliest unambiguously metal items begin at TL 1. Agricultural TL 0 is Neolithic; the most advanced stone age featuring domestication of livestock and village life. Earlier phases of TL 0 are Paleolithic/Mesolithic nomadic hunter gatherers.

What Tech Level would you give the American Indians prior to European contact? They had not reached the point of smelting metal, but would you call them Tech Level 0?

The Incas and mesoamericans did indeed practice "cold-hammered" metallurgy and smelting/lost-wax casting with copper and gold. The Incas had just begun to make bronze items immediately before the Spaniards arrived, but used it sparingly if at all for weapons, and weapons are usually where new tech is first applied. Pre-columbian metal items were almost exclusively ceremonial, e.g., masks and jewelry with almost no evidence of utilitarian items.

I would classify this level of tech as very early TL 1/Chalcolithic, the transition between Neolithic and Bronze Age.

 

[Amber Chancer]

You don't need a TL0 world to play in a TL0 setting.

What is the TL of Earth, 2014?

7.5 or thereabouts?

But ... what proportion of its inhabitants actually LIVE at TL7 or anything like it?

What is the TL of your average inhabitant of the South American rain forests? of the African Veldt? Of the Solomon Islands?

There are vast swathes of our planet where individuals, tribes, and whole nations even are effectively living 1, 2, 3, even 4 technological levels below the inhabitants of Silicon Valley, California.

Is this a lifestyle choice on their part?

Um, well, for the most part, not really.

Show me a TL4 world, and I'll show you a world where there are probably plenty of people living at TL1 and even TL0

 

[atpollard]

Show me a TL4 world, and I'll show you a world where there are probably plenty of people living at TL1 and even TL0

I don't know if it is really helpful (in RPG play) to equate TL and Poverty. If I visit a city on any continent on Earth, there will be cars and electric lights and cell phones and laptop computers for sale in the stores. The percentage of people who can afford them will vary, but they are available.

There are Anthropologists that study the urban homeless in the First World in terms associated with nomadic foragers and scavengers, but I don't think that living in a cardboard box under a bridge and panhandling for money to buy quarts of beer and scavenging food from supermarket garbage cans really qualifies as a "TL 0 society", whatever the superficial similarities.

Even among the rainforest tribes, they know what an airplane is and have probably touched one ... whatever their poverty, that makes even the most primitive people on the Earth roughly TL 5 (in terms of the technology that they come in contact with).

So I agree that there may be a TL or two gap on a world, but probably not much more than that without getting into a 'people' being kept on a reservation/preserve.

Two Hadzabe "Hunter Gatherers" and a Reseracher:

 

[Amber Chancer]

I'm not equating tech level and poverty.

I'm equating tech level with the tech level of the gadgets that people are using in their everyday lives, and are readily able (a) to acquire, (b) to operate, and (c) to get fixed when they go wrong.

Rainforest tribes may indeed know what an aeroplane is (they may even know how to spell it :rofl: ); but that knowledge does not affect their tech level. They can't build them; they can't buy them; they can't operate them; and if they had one they would have nobody to fix it if it went wrong. They are therefore existing at a sub-aeroplane TL, even though they are part of a world which is definitely of an aeroplane-building TL.

LBB3 page 9: "The technological level of a world determines the quality and sophistication of the products of a world. It indicates what precise types of equipment are available and common locally."

The types of equipment which are available locally in the Amazon rainforests differ radically from those that are available locally in Los Angeles.

Therefore the Amazon Rainforest and Los Ageles are localities existing at different technological levels, within the overall context of a world classified with the TL which prevails in Los Angeles.

And as I recall the OP, he was wanting to have a scenario in which a TL0 culture might nevertheless trade with guys in spaceships. And the answer is sure they might. Just as the Amazon rainforest dwellers might know what an aeroplane is, without thereby becoming a higher TL, so the TL0 guys might know what a spaceship is, without thereby becoming a higher TL.

Let's move this discussion to, say, 1880s America. You had a TL4 white society and a TL0 native community living side-by-side. The white men built trains. The native Americans saw trains and knew what they were. They might even have touched one ... or attacked it. But they couldn't build one, they didn't know how to operate it, and they couldn't repair one if it went wrong. They were still TL0, not TL4 ... but North America as a whole was TL4.