Technology "Creep"

[BRover]

In the Imperium, especially given the efforts of (some) nobles and one of the missions of the Scouts (to encourage technological progress), it seems there should be some technological creep--by which I mean that a lower-tech culture could make use of and even produce more advanced tech in some cases--say a tech 4 (ca. early 20th Century equivalent) could easily make plenty of tech 5 (1930s) items, and even in theory tech 6 or so (1940s), to a limited extent. Often this would mean bypassing some "primitive" models--say, Wright-brothers fliers, or all the plethora of automobiles (fossil fuel-powered, as well as steam, etc.) to focus on what works best in general.

My question is, how much is this true, and what sort of limits apply? Obviously, a Tech 1 place would have trouble skipping ahead to tech 3 or 4, and skipping to tech 10+ would be pretty absurd, but could a tech 8 world apply tech 10-12 ideas to get there, or would it be too difficult?

Maybe in short, given the availability of the full gamut of technology (in theory), what sort of effect does this have on cultures that are willing to apply it to develop their local technology base?

 

[vegas]

Technology transfer and the lack thereof in the setting is something I have given a fair amount of thought. Given what we know of human history, I would expect a lot more convergence of tech levels from sharing/transfer of knowledge. When we see instead lots of systems with different TLs, that demands (for me) an explanation.

Obviously, a Tech 1 place would have trouble skipping ahead to tech 3 or 4,

I tend to disagree. For TL 0 - 6 (covering real world human technologies) there is no technical reason why you wouldn't have convergence to TL 7 or 8 (depending how exactly you define those which varies across Travereller rule sets) within a generation or 3 provided you have a literate society. There is nothing fundamentally stopping low-tech humans from quickly advancing through those TLs when they just have to look up the instructions how to do it rather than make the scientific breakthroughs themselves. As progress is made, the wealth that comes with that progress means more resources available to education and investment and that just spurs more growth.

When I see a system stuck below TL7, I think we need a specific story for why they didn't keep going. Some of my go-to explanations for why they failed to advance are:
1) the population (or at least much of it) is non-human so they just haven't advanced as humans would have;
2) there is a cultural or political reason why they are choosing not to advance (e.g. Amish, ecological preserve, etc. hat tip to Mike W for emphasizing the later);
3) they have genuinely been isolated for some reason and have not had the opportunity to learn (yet).

For TL 8/9+ we are dealing with imagined technologies so we can imagine additional barriers such as:
4) capital & labor intensity of higher TL is enormous; only very large populations will create enough skilled people and be able to assemble enough capital to support high TL mfg. Higher tech levels actually require resources from multiple systems to practicably sustain. If the political environment of a system is not conducive, sufficient capital will not move there to support higher TLs
5) core technologies of higher TLs (good candidates are jump and gravitics, but also possibly power and computing) require resources that are not readily available (this explanation must be used sparingly/carefully if you assume a lot of trade in your universe, because it should be possible to overcome in that case)

 

[BRJN]

Commodore Perry comes knocking on isolationist Japan's door 1850s
Japan is recognized as being one of the West's Great Powers 1918
So some 60 years to work up from TL1-or-2 to TL5.

The sudden rise of the Developing World (out of the Third World) immediately upon the end of the Cold War suggests an uncomfortable explanation or two for low-tech societies surviving for generations despite there being high-tech worlds nearby.

 

[Sir Brad]

When Perry showed up Japan had limited TL4 Materials Tech, they had a lot of TL3 available but lacked some key techs, there biggest stumbling blocks where an overly stabilized socioeconomics and a lack of key resources (food production cap, lack of access to selected woods & metal ores).

the food production cap limited population and the ability to free up workers to engage in specialized crafts, the lack of key ores meant the advance materials tech was used up compensating for alloys they lacked access to. the lack of selected raw materials and enough enough craftsmen to make tech widely available.

same could be happening all over, not enough domestic food to allow for population, or perhaps too much population is dedicated to domestic food production and off world is too expensive to feed the proles means there is not enough specialist labor outside the agricultural field.

perhaps there is an agricultural revulsion or imported food out compeats local production, rural workers with no marketable skills invade the urban centers and the economy collapses under the weight of the demographic shift.

 

[BackworldTraveller]

Another reason (nicked from an SF book - can't recall which)...If you introduce a new technology, you can be sued for loss of earnings by those whose job is disrupted as a result!

Thus a financial disincentive to innovation and a huge benefit to archaeology...No it isn't new it was just unused since IY23.

 

[whartung]

So here's a curiosity.

What's the general feeling about the ubiquity of fossil fuels?

Is Earth a stand out exception in that regard, or is there tacit agreement that all similar planets have fossil fuels available for extraction and exploitation.

Because lack of cheap energy can certainly stall TL growth.

Would such worlds go deep in to wind and and water power? But does that really scale at "low tech"?

If fossil fuels are not ubiquitous, then a contacted colony effectively needs to jump from wood fires and windmills to fusion technology.

Because there's no reason to wrestle through the tech train, just like there's no reason today to lay land lines for rotary phones when you can plonk a solar powered cell tower down instead.

So, anyway, how much does energy availability impact this.

 

[Proneutron]

I use a case by case method. If I have deemed that the low tech planet is filled with people of the same qualities as medieval Japanese then you can see extremely rapid TL rise. If populated by people similar to Kalahari bushmen in nature it might take so long in campaign time that there is never a rise.

 

[Proneutron]

The sudden rise of the Developing World (out of the Third World) immediately upon the end of the Cold War suggests an uncomfortable explanation or two for low-tech societies surviving for generations despite there being high-tech worlds nearby.

Not really as many those same areas were stagnant LONG before the 20th century despite thousands of years of contact with higher TL peoples.

 

[Condottiere]

1. Japan always seemed to have an intrinsic capacity to rapidly industrialize; towards the end of the Sengoku Jidai, they reportedly had more matchlocks than all of Europe, a rather recent adoption from examples bought from the Portuguese, that drastically changed the nature of Japanese warfare. The Tokugawas decided their primacy depended on freezing social mobility and society. They also had a silk industry.

2. Depends on how fossil fuels are created, there was one interesting theory that oil occurs naturally, which would explain why some dry oil wells suddenly refilled; whether or not it's dinosaur juice, coal occurred because there was no natural cause to breakdown the plant material, back then.

3. In any event, you need an industrial base and an energy source.

 

[BwapTED]

So here's a curiosity.

What's the general feeling about the ubiquity of fossil fuels?

Is Earth a stand out exception in that regard, or is there tacit agreement that all similar planets have fossil fuels available for extraction and exploitation.

Because lack of cheap energy can certainly stall TL growth.

Would such worlds go deep in to wind and and water power? But does that really scale at "low tech"?

If fossil fuels are not ubiquitous, then a contacted colony effectively needs to jump from wood fires and windmills to fusion technology.

Because there's no reason to wrestle through the tech train, just like there's no reason today to lay land lines for rotary phones when you can plonk a solar powered cell tower down instead.

So, anyway, how much does energy availability impact this.

I think energy availability is likely to be a very important factor.

I do not assume that all worlds have fossil fuels. And the ones that do may not have the same fossil fuel wealth and variety that Earth/Terra has or had.

Klein has a great deal of peat-like nodules but no hard coal and little or no oil. Solar is a bust on such a cloudy world. The settlers made much sue of biomass and woodgas technologies. All this is sufficient for TL 6 needs but does limit economic development.


Biofuels like ethanol might be economical on some colony worlds, for use in internal combustion engines.

 

[jcrocker]

Years after Asimov died, some other writers were setting stories in the days of Asimov's Galactic Empire.

David Brin had most of the planets frozen in a pastoral - agricultural low tech state. Very stable, very traditional, all to make it easier for those on the capital to plan for the long term. There was selected technology but nothing like the massive tech disruptions as seen in the real world during tech progression.

The capital world of each province/district/prefecture/subsector was a technological industrial world, but the overall numbers were something like 90 to 95% pastoral.

So when I see TL-5 worlds in the Marches I think something along those lines has happened. For whatever reason the people there went for low-tech, and their descendants think "why change? it worked for Granma and Granpa".



Or we could just blame random dice rolls.

 

[Timerover51]

One factor affecting technology creep that has not been mentioned is population size. That is something that I have been looking at for a while, using military equipment at various technologies as the basis. To really support a Tech Level 5 production of military equipment looks like a minimum population in the millions as a minimum. For something like the full spectrum of Tech Level 8 goods, not restricting material to just military equipment, it looks like a population in the upper tens of millions to hundred of millions is needed. This does assume that the society is producing all of the Tech Level material from scratch, with no imports beyond the information needed for production. Consider what it takes to produce the steel that goes into an automobile. You have to go from raw ore to finished steel sheeting. You also have to have some form of coking coal to produce the steel. Lack of needed raw materials can really block technological advancement.

Look at one of several examples, some Real World and some fictional. Victoria in the Lanth sector has very limited supplies of iron ore, and does not appear, based on Marc's account, to have any significant quantities of fossil fuels, either coal or petroleum. That is going to severely limit your technology. Take a look at Australia. If considered in isolation, as a separate colony on a planet, it has supplies of iron ore and coal, but no significant resources of oil. How much would that limit technology?

In Space: 1889, Mars is shown to have limited oil resources, but no coal is mentioned. What is the fuel of all of the steam-powered aerial flyers? If oil, then the conflict on the planet would be for the limited oil resources. That does not seem to be the case, so maybe coal is around, or the ships are burning wood. Petroleum runs around 20,000 British Thermal Units per pound, coal averages around 14,000 BTU per pound, air-dried wood runs about 8000 BTU per pound (the same source credits wood with four-tenths the heat value of coal) while more recent data lists wood at 6500 BTU per pound, while peat runs about 7000 BTU per pound with 25% moisture. The main source for this is the Mechanical Engineer Reference of 1907. Aside from wood, which does show a range in even modern data, the rest is still good. With wood, the big factor is how dry it is. You do have methane produced naturally, which could be a back-up fuel once a group figures out how to produce and store it. You also have alcohol, which can be produced at a fairly low Tech Level, but it does have this distressing tendency to use material which is of value as food. What I am using for fuel in my alternate Space: 1889 universe is charcoal briquets, which are equivalent to lower-grade coal, with a bit more ash.

 

[Sir Brad]

Or Charcoal as an alternative to Coal but it is labor intensive to produce, plus if you are running Space 1889 Wood is a limited resource.

Methanol can be produced from Agg Waste, but unless you already know this and are trying to produce it as an Industrial Chemical or Fuel this breakthrough comes later then trying to make Ethanol that has many more uses.

 

[vegas]

Lack of some key resource, whether energy or some high tech unobtainium, has to be used carefully as an explanation. That works for why a society didn't advance past a point on its own, but in the OTU we have societies not advancing for millennia after they are in contact with other high tech systems in an Imperium that exists for "protecting trade, encouraging travel and commerce,..." among other things [CT:S11 p6.] At least through ~TL7 its hard to see why they couldn't trade for whatever they needed, especially something like energy which is so cheap in the far future.

Also keep in mind, the Spinward Marches were "...a relatively unpopulated region…" [CT:S11 p38] so the people who are on these lower tech systems are the decendents of colonists, not organic locally arising societies. That means their ancestors had high tech available and indeed made use of high tech to arrive in the first place and yet the current generation either choses not to use it or lost it.

Depending on how many minor human races there are (of which canon is a bit contradictory) this same thing is true about vast majority of systems elsewhere in the Imperium too.

I'm not saying it never works as a story (after all, its on my list #5!) just that care needs be taken.

 

[Condottiere]

As I've always maintained, technological singularity in Traveller is at level eight, with gravitational motors and viable fusion plants, very likely interdependent.

In theory, the Romans, having access to Greek genius, could have kick started the steam age.

A little industrial espionage in the Middle Kingdom, would have gotten them advanced metallurgy, printing, furnaces and gunpowder.

 

[whartung]

Or Charcoal as an alternative to Coal but it is labor intensive to produce, plus if you are running Space 1889 Wood is a limited resource.

The base issue with wood is simply being able to do it sustainably, whether you're using just raw wood or converting it in to charcoal.

One of the issues in Africa is the destruction of forest by local people for the production of charcoal.

First you have the basics of habitat destruction, but also don't think they're going around a replanting things for the future.

It's one of those things I've though about in the past. Simply, considering the rise of population and technology within Europe, and how through such processes resource such as forests and wood are exploited, I'm simply curious how many of the modern day forests are actually "natural" forests rather than something that has already been reaped at least once, and then perhaps neglected to be reborn, or even actively managed.

Are there any forests in Britain that are "untouched" similar to how much of the Pacific Northwest was untouched virgin "old growth" forest? Less so today, but there are certainly now protected tracts.

Or were all of the forests simply accessible enough to the peoples for ready use as a resource source or cleared for farmland or grazing.

There was a saying once that at some point in the past, a squirrel could travel across a large portion of the US without touching the ground. Can't say the truth to that, naturally, but we have certainly cleared our shared of wooded areas in our expansion.

 

[mike wightman]

Most of Britain's ancient woodland was cut down to feed the proto-industrial revolution - namely the mass production of iron for cannon to equip the Royal Navy.

Most of the wood was used in charcoal production that would then go towards iron smelting.

As woodland disappeared it was necessary to start using a black rock that burned - coal.

Initially this was taken from coastal seams and close to the surface deposits, but such was the demand for coal due to the shortage of charcoal that coal mining became an industry.

Unfortunately the surface coal was quickly mined and a way had to be found to empty deep mines of water - the answer was steam engine powered pumps.

Someone realised these steam engines could be improved and repurposed and the rest is the industrial revolution that lead to a small island off the coast of Europe to building the largest trade empire ever.

 

[BRover]

Or Charcoal as an alternative to Coal but it is labor intensive to produce, plus if you are running Space 1889 Wood is a limited resource.

Methanol can be produced from Agg Waste, but unless you already know this and are trying to produce it as an Industrial Chemical or Fuel this breakthrough comes later then trying to make Ethanol that has many more uses.

OTOH, with minimal tech savvy (via local scouts?), someone could suggest, "You know, rather than using your nice grain to make ethanol, why not collect methanol from that refuse over there, and eat the grain?" I recall that in WWII Germany (and controlled areas), civilian vehicles were often converted to use wood alcohol = methanol.

 

[whartung]

Most of Britain's ancient woodland was cut down to feed the proto-industrial revolution - namely the mass production of iron for cannon to equip the Royal Navy.

Most of the wood was used in charcoal production that would then go towards iron smelting.

As woodland disappeared it was necessary to start using a black rock that burned - coal.

That's why I was questioning whether fossil fuels were considered ubiquitous, because I think it's clear that wood is not a sustainable resource at the rate developing societies need to consume energy.

 

[Proneutron]

Methanol can be produced from Agg Waste, but unless you already know this and are trying to produce it as an Industrial Chemical or Fuel this breakthrough comes later then trying to make Ethanol that has many more uses.

Nope. Anyone who knows how to distil alcohol from vegetable matter like for making moonshine knows they can do that. The reason they don't is because they aren't aiming at making fuel but a consumable. So ANYONE who knows how to distil for consumption knows they can make the same for burning using less desirable vegetable matter.