[vicky_molokh]

Q: Is technology level (TL) defined by access or production? Does a settlement with imported mobile / cell phones count as TL8?

A: Production defines the 'full' TL.

Originally Posted by B513

Borrowed Technology
A society can be familiar with tech-
nology that it does not itself possess.
This is frequently the case for low-tech
societies with high-tech neighbors,
and for colonies. A village with Iron
Age technology (TL2) might be quite
familiar with the TL3 steel weapons
carried by travelers, and richer vil-
lagers might have a few, but local
smiths could not duplicate or repair
them. Express this as “TL2/3.”

Originally Posted by Kromm

A society with some TL8 gadgets isn't a TL8 society; it's a lower-TL society with gadgets. Transhuman Space went into it in more detail, and an upcoming supplement will discuss it more, but in brief:

The world average is TL4 or perhaps TL5; it's just that the world's cutting edge is TL8, so the TL4 parts have TL5-8 gadgets, the TL5 parts have TL6-8 gadgets, the TL6 parts have TL7-8 gadgets, and the TL7 parts have TL8 gadgets. But to "be TL8," the majority of your gadgets have to be nominally TL8. Don't mistake the absence of the specific visuals of late-medieval Europe or Steam Age London for the absence of TL4 or TL5 realities.

Privileged people living in high-tech societies tend to forget that they don't define the average, and tend to see the presence of their benevolence toward lower-TL regions as proof that they've raised the TL there. They haven't. The single biggest marker is probably "What's the modifier to aging rolls where you live?" (p. B444). If you're rolling against HT+1 rather than HT+5, your society is probably TL4 and not TL8, whatever gadgets you have.