Different TLs in different fields

[YankeeGamer]

I'm working on a tale on AlternateHistory.com that is dealing with just that situation.
In 1876, Lincoln, New Hampshire was struck by a meteorite, leaving a crater a mile and a half across, blown out of New Hampshire Granite (and making a part of New Hampshire the lowest point of land in the western hemisphere.)
The rest of the world finds this interesting, but the USA has become very intrested in space--the incoming rock's trail was seen over most of the East Coast, including Boston and New York.

The result, as of 1878, is telescope technology improving, but computational technology is approaching TL 5+1--mechanical computers. Also, other areas are pushing the edge of early TL 6--people are experimenting with rockets, with the long term goal of being able to go Up There and do something about an incoming rock, nce the astronomers have found and computed its course.

Various factors--like some near misses that have been documented--will keep ti going. I'm working on how far things can go, and what other fields get dragged along over the next few decades. The research is backed by Uncle Sam in a big way.

(The main character has expressed concern that they might not have a satellite in orbit by the end of the century.)

Once I get the timeline to ~ 1900, I'll post it here.

[Pursuivant]

Originally Posted by KarlKost

You can have TL 12 in biotech and 0 in everything else. That's how much it can vary.

Extremely high TL in one area necessarily increases TL in other areas because of the social organization and core technologies required to sustain that high TL.

Advanced biotech/medicine implies a roughly similar TL for agriculture, chemistry, materials science, and possibly related fields like power generation.

A hive mind society might effectively have high TL in certain areas, like information technology, due to innate traits rather than technology, however.

[Pursuivant]

Originally Posted by whswhs

In GURPS Low-Tech, we specified that the TL was based on what could commonly be made or purchased. It doesn't count if you've just come up with the idea, or if you've made the prototype, or even if you've debugged it. Once you start selling them, or once the knowhow is dispersed through your society, it's part of the TL.

The key word here is "dispersed." In societies with poor communication or extreme economic or social disparities, higher TL goods might be limited to tiny enclaves, the social/economic elites, or certain institutions.

That's why the High TL advantage and related Perks might exist in realistic games.

[KarlKost]

Originally Posted by Pursuivant

Extremely high TL in one area necessarily increases TL in other areas because of the social organization and core technologies required to sustain that high TL.

Advanced biotech/medicine implies a roughly similar TL for agriculture, chemistry, materials science, and possibly related fields like power generation.

A hive mind society might effectively have high TL in certain areas, like information technology, due to innate traits rather than technology, however.

Yeah, the Zerg are... Extremely fictional... With psionics, so they are not really realistic.

I did try a mental experience for such a case thou... I was thinking into the two most important things for OUR own technological development, and how we wouldnt have any without them: metals and wood.

Wood has been a massive stroke of luck. There's no other way to describe. A type of organical matter that is easily combustable under the conditions of our atmosphere? That's just so damn luck that the theory of the "Rare Earth" to why we dont see aliens around might just be spot on (and I never subscribed to it, but Im beggining to change my mind).

There's no particular reason to believe that the evolutive history of another planet would produce something as useful as wood; there was no particular reason for it to have happened here - well, that's debatable. Plants were competing for the Sun's light, and for that they needed a strong structure to sustain their bigger bodies, and it just so happens that structures made of Carbon are incredible resistant, and Carbon is very very common - a lot more than Calcium for instance, which could've been an alternative.

Anyway, despite the advantages of Carbon structres, it's still not too far fetched to imagine a world without "threes" (alien ones), or more precisely without wood. Maybe the first highly intelligent species of that world developed really quickly, before plants-alike were really into the business of having to heavily compete for the Sun (so they are still pretty much only grass and tiny soft bushes). Or a more unlikely option perhaps, the big plants could have used something alternative to high energy carbon structures - like Calcium for example, if said world had a Calcium rich soil (unlikely? Perhaps)

Anyway, for whatever reason, there's no wood-like organic structures.

So, there's no fire.

The other point crucial for our technological development were metals.

However, without fire, there's no metallurgy.

So I imagined a society that developed agriculture... That tammed the animals... That developed medicine... And that mastered the ability to pile up rocks so that their descendants can claim it was made by extraterrestrials.

Ok, that's all fair and good but... No fire. No metals.

So I was thinking, selective breeding, obviously, it would be the thing that would follow them around for thousands, tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands or even millions of years.

Organic manipulation would be their ONLY possible tech.

In such a case, it isnt so far fateched to imagine those people creating a TL 12 fully biotech civilization. They could even have "computers", but those would be massive "brain bugs".

The great leap here would be to go from selective breeding to actual genetic manipulation. The Evolution Theory and the Theory on Hereditarity, those are easy. The real hard part is learning to manipulate genes (or an alien equivalent), but since such civilization would be forced to advance a lot into chemistry and biology, not totally impossible. Given enough time, even trial and mistake could achieve that.

One thing is that many modern materials are organic in origin, such as plastic or kevlar.

So, the idea of a TL 12 in biotech and TL 0 in the rest (or at most TL 12 in BIOcomputers for example, but 0 in any non-biotech) aint so impossible as it would seem at first glance.

Originally Posted by Pursuivant

The key word here is "dispersed." In societies with poor communication or extreme economic or social disparities, higher TL goods might be limited to tiny enclaves, the social/economic elites, or certain institutions.

That's why the High TL advantage and related Perks might exist in realistic games.

We do have people and societies irl that live all the way up to TL0 as we speak

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Pursuivant

Extremely high TL in one area necessarily increases TL in other areas because of the social organization and core technologies required to sustain that high TL.

Advanced biotech/medicine implies a roughly similar TL for agriculture, chemistry, materials science, and possibly related fields like power generation.

A hive mind society might effectively have high TL in certain areas, like information technology, due to innate traits rather than technology, however.

The Zerg have a serious leg-up when it comes to "biotech" in that they're a species that can transform, and can direct their transformation, naturally. That said, simply having high biotech doesn't grant an understanding of warfare, logistics, space travel, architecture (their "buildings" are large enough they'd need such knowledge to shape their forms such that they don't collapse under their own weight), aerodynamics (for making mutalisks more streamlined), ballistics (for optimally shaping hydralisk projectiles), xenopsychology, using the technology created by other species, small unit tactics, etc. And the Zerg need all of that - and likely more - to manage what they can do in the games.

So, yeah, they're advanced in a lot more than just biotech.

[whswhs]

Our biotech involves knowing the structure of DNA and proteins, which involves such fields as organic chemistry, catalytic chemistry, and X-ray crystallography. And processing genetic information requires fairly high-powered computer technology. I think if you were on a biotech path you would either stall out before TL8, or be forced to invent those other technologies. And each of them entails several other technologies for support.

[jason taylor]

Originally Posted by Tom Mazanec

How far can TLs vary in a world in different fields? For example, I can see Caliph's TL in medical sciences and technologies being three TLs behind everything else, given their taboo of mucking with Allah's creation of the human body. But could you have the reverse...TL 11 biotech where everything else if TL 8? Could we have Moon flights where the computers are abaci? What fields depend on others for advancement?

There are number of explanations besides suppression. There as muscle power on land and sail power at sea besides cutting edge electronics. The German army was never fully automized, indeed none were but the British and Americans.

Another possibility is a technology that has been discovered as such but cannot come fully on line for economic reasons (usually expense of production).

[KarlKost]

Originally Posted by Varyon

The Zerg have a serious leg-up when it comes to "biotech" in that they're a species that can transform, and can direct their transformation, naturally. That said, simply having high biotech doesn't grant an understanding of warfare, logistics, space travel, architecture (their "buildings" are large enough they'd need such knowledge to shape their forms such that they don't collapse under their own weight), aerodynamics (for making mutalisks more streamlined), ballistics (for optimally shaping hydralisk projectiles), xenopsychology, using the technology created by other species, small unit tactics, etc. And the Zerg need all of that - and likely more - to manage what they can do in the games.

So, yeah, they're advanced in a lot more than just biotech.

Having advanced Biotech doesnt mean knowledge of exclusively genetics. It means knowledge about everything that it entails - which means biology, phisiology, evolution, chemistry and many many more - yes, that includes architecture. Nobody said it did. But it's still a specialized version for biostructures.

The zerg have ship-design skills too, but those are bio-ships, and so on.

Also, not all possible knowledge is "technology". "Warfare" for instance is NOT technology. Scientific knowledge is not technology, it's knowledge. Technology is the applicability of said knowledge. So, the Zerg can know pretty much the same as the Protoss know in theory, but only apply it for Biotech, so that does not invalidate the argument (architecture applied to bio-buildings is still biotech regardless).

[KarlKost]

Originally Posted by whswhs

Our biotech involves knowing the structure of DNA and proteins, which involves such fields as organic chemistry, catalytic chemistry, and X-ray crystallography. And processing genetic information requires fairly high-powered computer technology. I think if you were on a biotech path you would either stall out before TL8, or be forced to invent those other technologies. And each of them entails several other technologies for support.

Yes, that was being the problem I was having trying to imagine a biotech path for a civilization that for some reason couldnt have metallurgy. But may be possible with advances at the order of millions of years instead of thousands or centuries, and after TL 9 it would be a normal progress

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by KarlKost

Having advanced Biotech doesnt mean knowledge of exclusively genetics. It means knowledge about everything that it entails - which means biology, phisiology, evolution, chemistry and many many more - yes, that includes architecture. Nobody said it did. But it's still a specialized version for biostructures.

That's like saying we are TL 8 in Materials, but TL 0 everywhere else. Yes, the Zerg use a type of bioengineering for all of their stuff, but they require being advanced in more fields than just biotechnology to do all that.

Originally Posted by KarlKost

Also, not all possible knowledge is "technology". "Warfare" for instance is NOT technology. Scientific knowledge is not technology, it's knowledge. Technology is the applicability of said knowledge. So, the Zerg can know pretty much the same as the Protoss know in theory, but only apply it for Biotech, so that does not invalidate the argument (architecture applied to bio-buildings is still biotech regardless).

But we're not talking about what technology a society has made, we're talking about what their TL is. Crop rotation, germ theory, etc are all part of TL, so regardless of how you opt to define "technology," knowledge is a part of TL.