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Old 11-10-2016, 12:15 AM   #1
David Johnston2
 
Join Date: Dec 2007
Default Roads Not Taken

There are two basic approaches to creating divergent technologies. The first is to take away away something we had. A resource, a breakthrough, a need. The second is to give something we never had, frequently some kind of super science since it's difficult to imagine major breakthroughs that could have happened but did not.

An example of the first one would be my recent suggestion of a world which had never invented the concept of a "firing chamber" and were slow to develop electricity. So instead of having rifles they had small rocket launchers, and instead of having the internal combustion engines, they just had improved steam engines.

An example of the second would be the discovery of a plentiful room temperature superconductor at TL 6 or the integration of functional magic into advanced physical technology.

So what can we take away?
What can we give?

List of things to take away:

Petroleum
Alternating current
Fire
The computer chip
Iron and denser metals
Rubber
Wood
Radioactivity

List of things to give

A racial superpower
Magic enchantments
Exotic negative mass matter.
Fully developed Babbage machines
A heat source that requires no fuel
A way to detect (and generate) tachyons
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Old 11-10-2016, 12:32 AM   #2
McAllister
 
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Default Re: Roads Not Taken

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Originally Posted by David Johnston2 View Post
A heat source that requires no fuel
This might be a fun thought experiment: what's the lowest TL at which you can give a society the ability to break the law of conversation of energy, and they can leverage it into a post-scarcity economy? At least, it's interesting to me.
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Old 11-10-2016, 01:01 AM   #3
whswhs
 
Join Date: Jun 2005
Location: Lawrence, KS
Default Re: Roads Not Taken

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Originally Posted by McAllister View Post
This might be a fun thought experiment: what's the lowest TL at which you can give a society the ability to break the law of conversation of energy, and they can leverage it into a post-scarcity economy? At least, it's interesting to me.
By definition, a post-scarcity situation, could one exist, would not be an "economy": You would have unlimited amounts of everything you wanted, so you wouldn't need to economize.

But breaking the law of conservation of energy wouldn't give you post-scarcity; it would just make something other than energy the limiting resource. Maybe land area to occupy; or maybe time to send and receive messages, if you spread out across the sidereal universe. Or maybe just heat sinks; if you created all that extra energy, it would have to go somewhere, or you'd have global warming big time.

The law of conservation of energy was formulated at TL5, so that's where it could be broken by intent. At lower TLs you'd be creating some specific form of energy out of nothing. The Renaissance already had the idea of the self-turning wheel or perpetual motion machine; would that do?
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Old 11-10-2016, 01:09 AM   #4
David Johnston2
 
Join Date: Dec 2007
Default Re: Roads Not Taken

Quote:
Originally Posted by McAllister View Post
This might be a fun thought experiment: what's the lowest TL at which you can give a society the ability to break the law of conversation of energy, and they can leverage it into a post-scarcity economy? At least, it's interesting to me.
It would be higher than TL 8. But don't take it too literally. I only meant that it would be some method of producing heat that could go at least for years without requiring any more fuel. A fuel that was consumed extremely slowly would do the trick.
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Old 11-10-2016, 01:18 AM   #5
NorphTehDwarf
 
Join Date: Sep 2008
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List of things to give
Try this one on for size: TL0 techniques that allow breed stock to follow Lamarckian evolution.
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Old 11-10-2016, 01:32 AM   #6
Flyndaran
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Location: Forest Grove, Beaverton, Oregon
Default Re: Roads Not Taken

Rubber, leather, wood, etc. are all amazing biological materials important to ancient and modern technology.
Why not give some equally amazing but novel hypothetical yet realistic material?
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Old 11-10-2016, 02:07 AM   #7
malloyd
 
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Default Re: Roads Not Taken

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Rubber, leather, wood, etc. are all amazing biological materials important to ancient and modern technology.
Why not give some equally amazing but novel hypothetical yet realistic material?
Fibers are pretty amazing too, and suggest the difficulty of doing this. Who would look at fluff around cotton seeds and predict rope or cloth or cardboard paper?
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Old 11-10-2016, 03:16 AM   #8
Flyndaran
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Fibers are pretty amazing too, and suggest the difficulty of doing this. Who would look at fluff around cotton seeds and predict rope or cloth or cardboard paper?
Nearly pure cellulose for cotton and amazing lignin for wood are hard to beat. So I'd wonder about the possibilities of animal or local equivalent products.
Black smoker snails show that it's at least possible for iron heavy shells at depth. And of course we all know spider silk which hasn't been used much only, because of the insane difficulty in cultivating spiders and how little they produce.
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Old 11-10-2016, 04:44 AM   #9
vicky_molokh
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Location: Kyïv, Ukraine
Default Re: Roads Not Taken

In the campaign I'm running, one of the most significant Road Not Taken aspects is that the setting lacks assembly lines/economies-of-scale mass-production, but instead has TL6^+ 'neoforges' that allow craftsmen to achieve an equivalent boost in total productivity.
So, for example, if in our world it takes a 1000-tonne industrial plant with 100 workers to produce 100 bicycles per workday, in ÆS it takes a 10-tonne neoforge with one craftsman to produce 1 bicycle per workday.
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Old 11-10-2016, 05:28 AM   #10
Anaraxes
 
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A fuel that was consumed extremely slowly would do the trick.
A natural nuclear reactor, a la Oklo?
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