Rational Anti-Technology Fields

[Sindri]

Areas in which, for whatever reason, certain kinds of technology can't function aren't an uncommon feature in settings. They are frequently rather handwavy but I think that they're more interesting when handled in a bit more depth.

So lets put together some ideas for mechanisms that prevent various kinds of devices that are additive (something that gets put on top of physics rather than just saying that a particular effect doesn't happen anymore), consistent (something that doesn't change it's behaviour based on things like the intent behind the device's creation) and subtle (something that results in just failure rather than, for example, the device simply disappearing).

Now an issue with this is avoiding unintended consequences. It does little good to keep transistors from functioning if you also keep brains from functioning. The thing that prompts this thread has a dodge against effects on living creatures so that's something I can ignore (though mechanisms that don't mess with humans are probably more useful to others) but keeping the area from becoming super weird is important.

So what are some mechanisms whereby a device (transistors if you want to be given a goal rather than picking one) can be made to not work and what minor additional consequences are there.

[David Johnston2]

Periodic electromagnetic pulses would keep unshielded electronics from being useful without posing any immediate threat to the human brain. Particulates in the atmosphere could mess up air breathing engines. They'd also pose a threat to human lungs of course, but but nothing that couldn't be dealt with by a simple cloth mask. In both cases of course a machine could be designed for these hazards but that's never not true. Then of course there's the ever popular, "nanotechnology with an appetite for metal".

[Gedrin]

Gremlins are ultratech NAI bioroids that take the form of local flora and fauna. They are pervasive enough to be ecologically integrated. Their habit is to destroy, spectacularly, creations on their prohibited technology list. Their preference is to do so in ways that don't leave accurate information about the fault of the failure or its source.

Gremlins might be seeded by advanced civilizations with long view planning to restrain competition, or by Utopian Luddites.


Speaking of Luddites (in this case, the fear maddened variety), God's Rakurai (a orbital bombardment platform) might destroy you if you violate certain technological prohibitions. (See David Webber's Safehold books)

[Flyndaran]

Transistors are pretty much super primitive synapses, so it seems all but impossible to render their functioning impossible without also doing the same to organic brains.

I imagine it would be difficult to develop any industrial age without cheap access to coal and other organically derived petroleum deposits.

A quick read in Wikipedia suggests that transistor invention and development depended almost entirely on "easily" accessible elemental germanium.
While no known modern life form depends on it, who's to say that some long extinct hypothetical organism didn't extract it from the environment and concentrate it in a few out of the way concentrations removing it from "easy" discovery?

[Gedrin]

Just to be curious, how long do we want to delay the implementation of the transistor (or X)? There are a variety of ways to take the "easy paths" off the table, but that will only delay most technologies.

[Flyndaran]

Single celled organisms run amok. They rapidly consume all plastics and/or hydrocarbons.
Some insects are intensely attracted to em fields for no known reasons. Crank that up to 11 and you have electronics acting as a dangerous lab curiosity.

[Anaraxes]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

Transistors are pretty much super primitive synapses, so it seems all but impossible to render their functioning impossible without also doing the same to organic brains.

While you can certainly draw an analogy between the function of a synapse and a transistor, the ways in which human synapses work is radically different from the way transistors work.

For example, if you could alter the bandgap sizes or location relative to the Fermi level in a semiconductor, transistors won't function correctly. But there's no semiconduction involved in either a chemical or an electrical synapse. Those physically transport chemicals or ions over a much larger distance to carry a signal. There's no reason to expect the Hypothetical Mystery Field that affects the semiconductor also to affect neurons.

Conversely, we already have any number of drugs that affect synaptic behavior, whether that's an antidepressant, recreational drugs, or neurotoxins. But likely none of those chemicals will affect your computer*.


--
* Maybe one of them can dissolve silicon crystal, or leach the dopants, or just short circuit the things. I doubt anyone's tested them on integrated circuits. But those aren't the mechanisms by which they affect synaptic behavior.

[Gedrin]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

Single celled organisms run amok. They rapidly consume all plastics and/or hydrocarbons.
Some insects are intensely attracted to em fields for no known reasons. Crank that up to 11 and you have electronics acting as a dangerous lab curiosity.

And weaponized bees.

[Anthony]

There are plenty of perfectly normal environments that are hostile to particular types of technology; dust, for example. The problem you tend to run into is that a lot of hostile environments are also hostile towards people; if you want something that specifically targets 'technology' it probably has to be smart enough to recognize that something is technology and target it (this is perfectly easy to do deliberately; put a guy at the front door who confiscates whatever particular tech happens to be banned).

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

Single celled organisms run amok. They rapidly consume all plastics and/or hydrocarbons.

And pretty much everything else in the biosphere, including humans.

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by Anthony

...
And pretty much everything else in the biosphere, including humans.

I am not coal or plastic. No life form can consume everything in existence.